Fall Settles In

An autumnal chill has settled over Frick Park, and a recent rain has left the grass dewy. Clover is sprouting in little clusters-- the whole park is as green as the summer, but it is a grey, breezy September day.

I never mentioned the birch trees before. They are tall and brittle, dropping thin slabs of bark on the pedestrian paths they stretch over. Today, I pick up a piece, and am surprised by its softness. I don’t know what I had expected. Fragility, maybe: perhaps that it would break apart into ashes in my hand. The piece is ashy—or gritty, maybe, a membrane of dirt coating the side that had adhered to the trunk of one of the nearby trees—but it is also sturdy, and velvety soft on its outside.

There is a man standing at the southeastern entrance, the only other person I see. He is uphill from me, and seems to be looking down in a sort of predatory way. Or maybe he suspects that I am lost. I try to look busy for a few minutes. Eventually, he saunters over to a bush, and produces from it a leaf-blower. He turns it on, aiming it thirty degrees or so down towards the path, blowing a tempest of early Fall leaves into chaos and towards a growing pile off of the path. He is a park employee, I assume. He is “beautifying”—moving nature out of the way for the joggers that will visit the park.

 The leaves themselves are still thick, slick, and veiny, but they have fully browned. Not browned, really—from a distance, they look Casper white. But up close, they are clearly beige. I pick one of these up, as well, turn it over in my hands, twirl it by the stem. It has the same sturdy—but dry ashy—quality of the birch bark, and I’m left to wonder a bit about this time of year, when some things are still alive, but others are clearly in the process of annual deterioration. Most of the trees are bare, now. Their dropped leaves don’t layer on the ground, but are scattered here or there in uneven assemblages.

I also begin to notice—for the first time of my visits here—the birds. There are some pigeons that have found their way from the city surrounding the park, and other dove-like birds, but mostly I see finches, sparrows and thrushes—a pretty standard collection in a pretty standard urban park. They are busy; they stay close to the ground, mostly, and flock off in cacophony if I crunch a leaf underneath my foot or make any other disturbing noise too close to them. I don’t usually notice them unless or until they fly off. Their feathers are too demure: the same light brown with speckles that the leaves have, and they camouflage too well.

The park employee has finished blowing the leaves, and meets up with a coworker who has parked his truck near that southeastern entrance. The second man is wearing a neon orange vest, the brightest color in the park, and brighter, even, than the siding of houses that I can see uphill and beyond. They both light up a cigarette (I wonder if they are supposed to, on park property, and all) and I move on.