Who Knows The Changing Season?

 The past week has been both familiar and odd. The season is definitely changing—or, rather, the days and nights aren’t settling into one season or another.  It’s warm enough to go swimming at the beach, if the water were warmer. Then a wall of rain falls in the wee hours of morning. A clear sky is revealed at sunrise, but the air is colder than the sea you couldn’t swim in.  And patches of the most vibrant colors rise among meadows of mud that was the dust of last year’s leaves.

I haven’t ridden a lot of miles even though I’ve managed to get out for a spin, among all I’ve had to do, every day during the past week. For yesterday’s ride, I brought the usual things—spare tube, tire levers, multitool and pump—along with a can of Friskies and an aluminum foil plate from a takeout order.  I didn’t see the cat I sometimes encounter along the Randall’s Island shoreline, near the ramp to the Manhattan spur of the RFK Bridge.  But I left that meal—brunch? Do cats know it’s Sunday—anyway.

That cat, I am sure, understands the changing season better than I ever will: She (I think she’s female) has no choice but to feel it in her bones. I wonder how she sees the colors of the season, whatever it is.

Late or Early?

 Late afternoon, late in the season.  Or is it a prelude to evening, and a new season?

A ride to Randall’s Island after work, after lunch, after everything else brought me to the brink—of changes.

I went for a ride in spite of (OK, you know me well enough to know that I might’ve ridden because of) high wind warnings. Gusts blew at my face, sides and back, depending on which way I rode.  But once I got to the Island—with some of the largest expanses of open space in the city—it seemed there was nothing but wind.

The temperature was around 10C (50F):  not unusual for this time of year. But the inescapable gusts could make it seem that winter would never end.

Or are they what ushers in the Spring?

Is this bare tree a reminder that winter is still with us? Or do its bare branches reveal a sky that’s brightening?

And is the mud around its roots a graveyard of bones and melted snow? Or is it a cradle for irises, purple asters and hyacinths?

Ah, the riddles of a late day ride, late in the winter—or a ride at the precipice of twilight, and a new season!