When Autumn Leaves Start to Fall...

The Bethesda Fountain in Central Park in Autumn

There is an air vent in the sidewalk just outside of the stairs on one of the subway exits of Penn Station at 34th Street which is situated in the shadow of Madison Square Garden. Droves of people pass over it every day while coming and going, most-likely not taking the time to look at the gray dirty ground with glistening sights like the Empire State Building, the New Yorker Hotel and the great cylindrical mass of "the Garden," standing tall overhead. Down in the cracks beneath the metal grate, there is a lovely little patch of green leaves growing under the surface, surrounded by a sea of concrete and footsteps. They have been sheared off to be precisely level with the surface of the ground by the loafers, sneakers, boots and stiletto heels of the 8th Avenue work force and all of the others who pass by. In this rather unlikely environment, a little patch of green plants decided to make their modest home, when they could have just as easily lived by the river or in a park where sunlight would have been easier to come by and there may have been more room to sprawl out and relax. It seems that this particular plant colony desired something unique out of its short existence. Perhaps these leafy little fellows had a desire to be in the middle of something bigger and greater, seeing life first hand, rather than hearing about it from a distance. I'm sure that many of their green counterparts looking at their cramped quarters and small rations of sunshine might think the very idea to be rather silly, indeed. Every morning on my way to work, I walk over this little community of brave weedlings and smile a bit, but then I continue on with my own little weedling day...

Once again, Autumn has taken over the city, and everyone is surprised that the days are getting progressively shorter and colder (as though nothing like this has ever happened before). As a child, my parents would load us all up in our little Subaru wagon for long drives in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado to go "see the colors" every year in the Fall. Although containing three children in one back seat of a rather small station wagon for a drive that would often last all day long was no simple task for my parents, they would diligently suffer through endless streams of words that would spew from us, especially as my sister Ginny would always become motion sick after the first five minutes, every single time. Once we finally reached the highway out of town, and the mountains came into full view, slowly the streams of consciousness flowing from our open mouths would diminish as our eyes took in the sights before us. Driving up high into steep and rocky back roads, we passed abandoned little mining settlements from Colorado's days of legend, and found ourselves in places where the world seemed to be frozen in time, or perhaps outside of it completely. We would get out and take little hikes into meadows and along streams, my father pointing out which plants were edible and my mother collecting herbs and flowers to be dried and placed in jars for purposes never revealed. I remember walking through cascades of yellow and orange aspen leaves, illuminated by the sun above like a heavenly canopy with jeweled specks of the deepest blue skies peeking through the cracks. When the breeze would pick up, the leaves would float gently to the ground in a lovely dance, as if orchestrated by God himself. Of course time has probably amplified these images in my memory and inevitably aggrandized them, but I remember waiting for Fall every year just for those drives high up into the Rocky Mountains to see the world so briefly transformed.

Just as Autumn would transform the mountains of my childhood, it transforms the city into something even more beautiful than usual. The Autumn light seems to bend and hug the concrete and steel surfaces of the buildings and streets in such a soft and gentle way, while the trees put on great shows for passersby, much like the ladies walking along 5th Avenue in their in their tweeds and colorful woolen sweaters. The whole town seems to be making one last triumphant dash into the light, taking one final step out onto the stage before the ice and the blackness of winter shut everything away in blues and grays as the final curtain closes until Spring. Walking through Central Park in these last weeks of comfortable beauty is quite an experience. The Park, in general, is always an experience, but the colorful trees and the romantic feeling of the season make it even more of an attraction for tourists, families and ferrel children from the Bronx and New Jersey who seem to run about shrieking with the leavings of cheap hot dogs all over their sticky little hands, just waiting to run into a stranger's dry-clean-only wool coat with atomic force. Cameras seem to flash upon every leaf and every tree branch, trying to document the ephemeral majesty of a state of being that seems to ache with its own urgency to express and then expire. Everything in the park seems transformed by this deluge of vibrant color and light that signifies the end of one thing and the start of another. Like the sap that I am, I always think of the old jazz song "Autumn Leaves" (originally "Les Feuilles Mortes"), and hum it to myself as I walk the streets of New York during this time of year:

"...Since you went away,
The days grow long,
And soon I'll hear,
Ol' Winter's song,
But I miss you most of all, my darling,
When Autumn leaves start to fall..."

 Though the Autumn has been lovely, it has brought about the demise of my little weed colony outside of Penn Station. Each morning as I walk on the sidewalk and look down the grate below, there are fewer and fewer little patches of green. Once the last of the leaves has withered away into the darkness of the cavernous hole below, I will know that winter has come and will stay for longer than we ever feel should be possible, much less legal. I can only hope that the spring will revive them like Lazarus in the Biblical tale. Until then, I shall enjoy the last days of color and beauty that will be afforded to me before my balance is spent and my winter debt will inevitably be owed until paid in full.