Placid

We are back from a few days at Lake Placid in the middle of the Adirondacks Forest Preserve. The preserve is a stunning place, and huge, over 6 million acres. It’s dotted with towns and privately held property, but almost half the area is public land, ours. With so little going right in our country just now, it helps to see what we are capable of doing right, what we have preserved and cherished and passed down through generations, though I’m mindful that we stole these lands first. We have these beautiful mountains, these vast forests, these spectacular lakes.

The drive up was beautiful. Our hill is always so beautiful, but it’s refreshing to see different beauty. There is a stunning lake around nearly every bend in the road, blue lakes surrounded by trees, mountains in the background. We are driving north into fall, into the future that has not quite yet come to Sunnyhill. It’s not leaf peeping season yet in the Adirondacks, but there are spectacular young maples scarlet red, bright as fire. Sometimes it’s just an early branch or two on a still green tree. Sometimes it’s the whole tree. In a few weeks there will be much less green and much more red and gold and orange. But for now, it’s still mostly green with just bursts of the color the future holds.

In the town of Lake Placid pretty much everyone is masked. It still looks and feels strange. We wear masks in Cooperstown of course, but we spend nearly all our time at home, unmasked. So it’s still a little awkward to dig for our masks every time we get out of the car, and a little uncomfortable to encounter a masked world in a mask. I’m aware of how much I depend on the lower part of the face to read and convey emotions. A couple of friendly, middle aged men stopped to talk with us about Charlie in a park above the lake. He reminds them of the dog they have left at home and miss. I found myself smiling behind my mask and realized they couldn’t see my smile. But I could hear their friendliness and see it in their eyes, so I could imagine they could read me in the same way. The infection rates in Essex County are low, making it a good place for us friendly tourists. We ate every meal outside, and the trip felt quite safe. But strange.

What was not strange was the spectacular country. Peter and Aviva, who have climbed more than half the peaks in the Adirondacks, suggested that we non-hikers drive up Whiteface Mountain, the only peak with a road that goes close to the top, the sixth highest peak in the state. It was a drive that had us gasping at every turn. The size of the space you can see is so much greater than we are used to, dwarfing what seems like a long view from Sunnyhill. I’ve seen long views from mountains in New Mexico and on our drives across the country, and of course I’ve seen long views at the ocean. But there is something different about this view. Maybe it’s the rhythm of the mountains, the punctuation of the lakes. Maybe it’s the feel of the wind that has blown across all that space. The view pulls me out into it, into that vast space. It’s a view that reminds me how small and temporary my own life is. We do have the power to destroy it, to heat the planet so that it burns, to clear cut the timber, to scrape out vast open pit mines, to pave it over as we have done with so much of our precious planet. But we haven’t, not yet. Our ancestors made a promise to themselves to preserve it in 1892, and so far, six or seven generation have kept the promise. It’s an important thing we’ve done right.

It was a lovely trip, but we were glad to be home. Our hill is quieter now. The bluebirds left weeks ago, and now the swallows and our clan of geese are gone too. A flight of geese flies honking over the hill now and then, but our geese left a couple of weeks ago, finished feasting on the grubs and tender grasses of the hill we share. The barn seems empty without the swallows swooping in and out from morning to evening.

Every living thing here has evolved to cope with the seasons. Some who can, like the geese, have learned to leave. The trees, rooted here, shed their leaves to conserve energy through the cold, short days that are coming. The fall equinox is still days away, when we will shift down to days shorter than nights, but the long days are over for this year. Walking up Gulf Road, the first of the leaves that have fallen and dried scuttle ahead of me in a wind that hints of the changing weather. The once brilliant goldenrods are mostly past their prime, their flowers drying and shedding seed to lie in wait for the return of warm weather and long days. Asters line the road, among the last hurrahs of the flowering world.

We humans, too, have evolved to cope with the seasons in our own brainy ways, harnessing fire and electricity to keep us warm, figuring out how to fly south for the winter. We are not planning to leave just now, we’ll be stocking up on pellets to feed the stove. This will be a different winter, with no indoor gatherings, no cozy dinners with friends, no live concerts, no classes at the gym, no chats in the blessedly warm sauna, no friendly games of mah jongg at the senior center. A virus has evolved to throw a monkey wrench into our winter plans, part of the long competition among living things. I imagine our winter will be placid, calm and peaceful, waiting out the virus and the cold, short days.