Oak

Late autumn seems more beautiful to me than the earlier part of the season this year.  We didn’t have the cold nights in early October that produce brilliant reds and yellows.  The colors were muted, and not all that interesting. But now, with a lot of leaves blown down by several days of high winds, the leaves that are left stand out more.  Much of what I see are the oaks. The palette is in glossy browns that beggar my vocabulary. Cinnamon comes close to part of the spectrum, but no one word can describe the range and variety of browns.  The oak leaves are bigger and sturdier than the leaves that have already fallen.  They don’t flutter as lightly. They’re holding on to their branches for now, but it won’t be long. Already, there are more trees without leaves than with, and the landscape is defined more by bare branches than leaves.

The season shifts. Part of Cooperstown celebrated the shift last night with the final concert of the “summer concert season” at the Otesaga. I think I’ve written about the beautiful old hotel on the lake before. It’s a perfect venue for chamber music, with a room that is the size of the ballrooms of the great houses of Europe that some of this music was first played in. It’s a gracious room, with beautiful woodwork carefully painted white against beige walls, and muted blue/grey curtains framing the great windows looking out over the afternoon lake.  The concert started at 4:00, so we still had the lake view to enjoy while we waited for it to begin.

The Ying quartet have been playing together professionally for thirty years, but the three siblings have probably played together since they were old enough to hold violin, cello, and viola. The first violin is the only outsider, but he plays as if he has always played with them. They gave us two hours of perfect music, a Hayden, a modern piece, and a Tchaikovsky. There were only three rows of seats between where Jay and I sat in the back row and the small stage. I spent most of the concert watching the faces of the brothers on cello and viola as the music ran through their bodies and across their faces. Joy, amusement, furious energy, deep concentration, and moments of pure transcendence. Eyebrows raised, brows furrowed, flickers of smiles. It’s a different experience from a big concert hall, and a world away from recorded music.  What a delight.

In the intermission Aviva introduced me to a Bulgarian sculptor she had met at a gallery opening. This rural area is full of surprises.

We had dinner with Peter and Aviva after the concert at Alex’s bistro on Main Street. Butternut squash soup, lamb chops with roasted cauliflower, and a fabulous, flaky apple tart with vanilla ice cream. Good company, good food, a warm and pleasant room – the perfect finish to the evening. We drove home in the country dark.  When we turned off 28, the main road out of Cooperstown, onto 11, the road to Hartwick, Jay turned on the high beams.  In the 15 minute drive on 11 he only had to flick them off four times for oncoming cars. The headlights create a tunnel of light in the dark autumn woods.  Here and there, lights shine from a snug house.  Quiet and dark, and no deer until we turn onto our own driveway where they are browsing near the house. There are stars, after nights and nights of cloudy skies.

The brown oak leaves, the excellent string quartet, a good meal, a drive home in country dark, all of it reminds me of Dad. The oak we planted in Amenia for his 80th birthday will be covered in rich, brown leaves now. It is 19 years since that happy birthday when Shayne and Joe and Mom and Dad were all still alive and well. Between that happy time and this happy time there is a great trough of loss. But whether the years were happy ones for us or grievously sad, the oak just kept growing into the sky, straight and tall, putting out its buds in the spring, spreading its leaves through the summer, and dropping them, shining brown, onto the ground in late autumn.