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September 22, 2004
Autumnal Equinox
2000 (And a follow-up.)2001
2002
2003
Hurricane season again. Looking at last year’s post I see that we were dodging a tropical storm then too, though we’ve only gotten the after-effects of more distant dramas this time around. Hurricanes are extremities of the weather, but while balance between extremes has been an Equinox theme of mine, this Summer was something less than extreme; cool even, and it’s easy enough to feel Autumn arriving in the wind and rain of a draining hurricane.
Fall is always a mixed season, full of conflicting emotions. It bears the sadness of decline, but as I noted in 2000, it’s also a time of refocusing and new beginnings following Summer’s relaxation. And it’s beautiful: particularly here in the northeast, Autumn offers the widest array of scenes of any season, from lush green to vivid, varied hues to the bare bones of the landscape exposed, and maybe even the first snow.
Perhaps the beauty piques the melancholy. Winter is worse, but in a more grit-your-teeth-and-get-through-it sort of way. On a sensual level the better part of Fall is an agreeable experience, but it reminds us of the downside of a cycle that moves through our lives as well as through our seasons.
Death, then, is the specter that haunts our Autumns. So it’s no coincidence that my posts on this occasion have often struck a plaintive note. Or rather it is coincidence and more than coincidence. That other present specter, the terror of 9/11 and its baleful aftermath, is now a part of the season, still echoing in the present presidential campaign. In 2001 it was only my ritual duty to the Equinox that forced me to focus on my first post after that date, mixing metaphors of various sorts of “Fall.”
Some coincidence.
Even a year later I was still searching the natural world, or at least the Park, for ways to raise fallen spirits. Compared to our affairs a mere natural disaster like a hurricane is a small matter.
Or at least it seems that way until you actually have to go through a hurricane. Luckily, we’ve been spared the brunt of the latest storms, but the residual effects have certainly been felt here. In a way, they mirror the piquant mix of pleasure and pain that animates this whole season. Torrential rains soaked me on the way to work, and washed out half of last weekend. That’s a loss I grudge, now that my free time is at a premium, but the other side of the coin was that as the storm finally moved off it drew a strong cold front in its wake, sucking autumnal airs down from Canada. The result was a huge movement of birds, many of them perhaps stressed by the weather, leading them to stop en masse in Central Park for refueling last Sunday.
There were birds everywhere. Usually they tend to concentrate in particular areas with favorable characteristics, which birders refer to as “hot spots.” On this occasion the whole Park was a hot spot. Almost any tree you looked at had warblers flitting through it; flycatchers ringed the Pool; sparrows fed on lawns; hawks passed overhead. And this went on all day. Typically, birds are most active early in the morning; often they all but disappear by mid-afternoon, but these birds were seriously hungry, actively feeding throughout the day.
It was a great show. Park observers tallied at least one hundred and seventeen different species, the highest daily count in the last two years. Birdwatchers wait for rare days like this one. But the beauty of it was only in our eyes; for the birds, it’s a different story. What seems to us a wonderful display is for them a highly fraught matter of life and death. For a stressed-out migrant, finding enough to eat after a hard flight is crucial. The frenzied feeding suggests that many had a rough trip, and then they found themselves concentrated in a small area with lots of competition for resources. Imagine yourself having to fight your way around a buffet table in a crowd of thousands of starving people.
We do associate Autumn with feasting, but soon enough the choicest fruits of the harvest are consumed. The birds are abandoning this table, headed for better feeding opportunities in southern latitudes, and for those of us staying around these parts it pays to have something put by against the hard times ahead.
But that’s Fall: feast and famine, effervescing into a passing pageant of tragic beauty. Spring is too far away for hope, and Winter too close to deny. In the meantime, we have the glory of the moment, and no choice but to live in it. So spread your wings, but mind your manners at the table.