Photographs and Memories
A year ago we were “back east” prepping the old homestead for sale – cleaning out 60+ years of stuff, ours, family’s and friends… making arrangements to bring the last of our belongings back with us to Arizona, negotiating with realtors… and remembering.
Early October in upstate NY is the best time of year. Indian summer – cool at night, but still warm during the day. The leaves are noticeably changing color by now – still mostly green, but plenty of reds and golds, and beginning to collect on the sides of the road where they swish and crunch underfoot. Autumn has a smell too – it’s a pleasant, earthy aroma and there are fields populated with fat, orange pumpkins and butternut squash, goldenrod and other wildflowers still displaying their best finery. The squirrels, bears and deer are busy collecting and bulking up on nuts, seeds, apples and whatever else they can find, readying themselves for the soon arriving winter, and there are high altitude formations of geese making their way overhead, traveling south to warmer climes. You can hear them honking encouragement to each other long before you’re able to see their tiny figures high up in the October blue sky. There’s a “cow pond” on Cemetery Road in New Lebs which is a favorite waypoint for groups of these winged travelers. It’s pretty much a certainty that more than a few days will find hundreds of them clustered around the pond, picking clean the last of the “cow corn” remaining after the harvest of the nearby fields. At some pre-arranged point, they’ll just know the right time has come, and group after group of them will take flight again, continuing the long trip south, leaving the pond and maybe just a few last minute stragglers behind.
I guess in a way, that’s what we were doing too. This is the last photo I took from the old homestead – the view from the upstairs back bedroom window, looking across the road toward what used to be the field where – as a kid, I’d lay on my back, watching the clouds drift by. No longer a field of goldenrod, it’s long since been tamed into a neighbor’s well cared-for lawn.
Memories. I’m glad I have them. I love where we are now, and I couldn’t go back, even if I wanted to. Sure, the geography is more or less the same, but it’s less about the roads and fields, and more about the meaning we attach to them. Times have changed, I’ve changed, and the places I remember really don’t exist anymore, except in these photos and memories.