Friday afternoon, I pedaled along the North Shore--into the wind most of the way out, with it on the way back.
On my way back, I stopped in Fort Totten. As its name implies, it was an active military base. Now one section of it is used for Army Reserve training exercises; the New York Fire Department uses another. The rest is a park with some great views of Long Island Sound and, on a clear day, the New York skyline.
When I stopped, I chanced upon this:
I got to thinking, ironically, about a long-ago conversation with an Italian olive grower. The trees take 100 years to bear fruit, he told me. So, he said, I am not planting a tree for me, for my children, or their grandchildren. Rather, he is planting for their grandchildren.
A few weeks after that trip--during which I pedaled from Rome to Avignon and took the TGV (still pretty new then) to Paris--I went to to see my brother in SoCal, with a stop in NoCal. I took time from doing all of the things that could have gotten me into trouble (yes, even in San Francisco) to see the millenia-old trees on the other side of the bridge. Later, I would try to write about how it felt to look at living things--olive, sequoia and other trees--that were older than any other living thing I'd seen, and any civilization or race I'd ever read about. They were, it seemed, almost as old as the earth itself.
Here in NY, the trees aren't quite that old. But at least a few have been around for a century or more and have weathered all manner of natural cataclysms and human-made traumas. But this year proved to be too much for some that fell or broke, like the one in the photo.
Somehow it made the mostly-clear sky even more stark and a harbinger of winter. Or, could it be a signal to some other direction we (or at least I) cannot yet discern? Was it directing me to some place I haven't seen or imagined?
I'll spare you any comparisons to the green light in the Great Gatsby!
