Nature Blog #6: Fall Frost

Monday, October 19, 2009
11:00 am

I bundle up, grab a cup of warm coffee and head out to my balcony. Today is one of the first sunny days this week. I embrace the heat of the sun as it warms my typing fingertips. The leaves of my honey locust are hanging lower than normal. Their long thin petals are turning from green to yellow to gold. They flutter ever so lightly in the passing breeze; its cold fall air bites at my nose. The birds are loud today. I think they have come out for the sun. Their calls remind me of spring, yet the air is cold and the foliage is full of color.

As I scan the ground below me, everything is green and dry. The past few days of rain seemed to have cleansed the earth. This morning when I took my dog to the park, the ground was still covered in frost. The grass looked coated in a silver sheet, frosted and fuzzy like sage. As the sun rose, I watched the line of light gradually melt away the frost. The minted gray turned green and wet. Pillars and columns of frost still stood out, shadowed by chimneys and trees. It looked like the reflection of a skyline in the glib waters of a city river.

One of my friendly groundhogs is scurrying just below me. He is walking along the edge of a European buckthorn, trudging his plump body back and forth as he grazes. I can barely tell where his head meets his body. He is a large groundhog with a tiny nose that peers out into the open, smelling for something to nibble. His hair shines in the morning light, black and auburn and brown streaks that hover like a log over the newly mowed grass. I have never seen him for this length of time; usually he darts from one hole to the next, hiding from noise or people. Up the steps he scurries, reaching the top of parking gravel, turns quickly and darts back down under the buckthorn. I think a car scared him. I wonder where his companions are. I know there are at least three groundhogs that live in the vacant lot next to my balcony. It seems he is also out today for the sun, to bask in its warmth and vitamin D.

The air feels heavy today. It is a clear fall morning, but as I scan the horizon I notice all the trees merge together. There is a slight blur between their silhouettes and the sky, a friendly haze that the sun proudly illuminates. I close my eyes and let the sun warm their lids. The tips of my eyelashes create halos of iridescent light as I slowly open them to the day. Trucks speed down Washington Blvd. and I am reminded of all I have to do today. For a moment, I wish I was far away from this noise, out in the middle of the countryside. I think I’ll take a trip this weekend, to the woods, or the mountains. This balcony is my place to come and think, but today I want to be some place far away, some place where the groundhogs never hide and where the morning frost would last longer, quiet and still as it melts slowly into the land.