Sunday | 4 October 2020

While usually I look at the pond and imagine its cool water with desire, today the bitter chill of the morning made that imagined immersion feel more like a knife’s edge than welcome relief. I have never regretted swimming in cold water. From one edge of the pond, brown leaves and the dark green sheen of the oaks and pines. From the other, where the sugar maples just turned, yellow brilliance overcomes even the turgid mucking green, and explodes with delight over the surface. This bright promise of fall – that bundled warmth, thrusting freshness of change, that feeling of hope despite winter’s iminent arrival (or because of it?).

Back to Pond Notes