Memorable Experiences in Nature

Apple-picking in September! I'll never forget that smell, the smell of being high up in the leafy canopy of an apple tree and being just about to bite into a denim-rubbed fruit. But how to choose? Up in the tree where colors and smells and even clean air were all so vibrant, choosing an apple to munch on was often a dazzling dilemma. You had to tug just so with your slightly chapped hands, so the fruit would give way without plunging headlong toward the ground. The feel of it in your hand was like nothing bought in a grocery store ...

One aspect of nature which represented continuity during my youth was the changing of the seasons in New England. It was a phenomenon I missed a great deal when I moved to Texas for school. Especially dear to me was the fall foliage, as seen in this picture. The first leaves on the maple tree in front of our house would begin to yellow, and then become infused with glorious shades of autumn. There's a particular smell to fallen leaves, and a particular sound under your feet as your shoes crunch through them. It meant hours of raking, but it also meant jumping in the huge piles, hiding in the leaves and throwing them with abandon at whoever would join in. Or, there were the drives along winding roads where we would almost careen off the road, so distracted would we be at each tree, like a roaring bonfire, on either side of us. There were trips to Mt. Monadnock, Mt. Wachusett, Parker's Maple Barn, Grammy's house in New Hampshire, or just the surrounding towns in Massachusetts. The air would almost bite you with its crisp edge, but it was a delicious edge that made you aware of every bit of pulsing life in you, down to your chapped fingertips.

When I was eleven or twelve, I remember staying for a couple of weeks at my grandmother's beach house on Fire Island, New York. The house was just a hop, skip and a jump on (bare)foot from the dunes, and we could walk up a weather boardwalk, over the dunes and onto the vast expanse of sand -- gold in the sunshine, grey in the morning and evening shadows. I would wake up before anyone else, grab my notebook, and slip out of the house to go pattering up the path, over the boardwalk and onto the deserted beach. There on the sand, sitting with my feet tucked under me or turning cartwheels or splashing out to the sandbar, I could be alone with my thoughts, my feelings, and most of all my God. The ocean fascinated me with its paradoxical beauty and danger, its constant change and its enduring permanence. Sandpipers, with their delicate feet, would tease the tide at the very edge of where the waves rushed smoothly in. The sun would be easing its way above the horizon as I breathed in the damp salty air.

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