Paris Hill

Paris Hill, New York.

(Click image for larger version)

We made a quick trip to central New York to see my parents on Monday, and came home yesterday morning. Spring is just coming to the fields and farms, and the land was tender and beautiful: the first velvety green on the hayfields, the yellow tresses of the willows in the swampy hollows between hills, the cows slowly walking out from the barnyards, chickens roaming happily behind houses. Tractors plowed wide dark brown swaths across the valleys, and the entire landscape smelled sweetly of manure. Behind one barn, a middle-aged man followed his aged father out to the field, the latter in a cap and dungarees, walking strongly but bent, holding a long green stem of something in his hand.

 

Crows and geese and blackbirds and hawks were everywhere, and letting you know it; deer grazed - the occasional alert ears raised to face the road - in the edges of fields and turkeys brazenly pecked close to the road. A heron flew low over our house, on its way to some morning hunting of the  spring peepers, maybe, who had been so vocal the night before, and just beneath the slightly rippled surface of the lake, four carp swam lazily, their backs to the sunlight. I dug a few worms and fished a little with my mother, in the same sun, and - other than the jet trails in the blue sky far overhead - it felt like we could have been in just about any century of the last four or five.

Comments

[St Antonym]

Simply perfect.

This reminds of two things.

One is the beginning of John Fowles' "Daniel Martin" in which he describes a working day in the English countryside. Dorset, I think, or Devon. Can't ever keep those two straight. Anyway, it's fifteen pages of the most wonderful English prose, and the six-hundred pages that follow don't quite live up to it.

The second thing that comes to mind is Bruegel's "Corn Harvesters" which is now in New York City, and which, hard as it is to believe, was one of the things that helped me keep going in September of 2001. An image is here: http://www.modjourn.brown.edu/mjp/Image/Breughel/harvesters.jpg

A moment well-lived, as these were for you Beth, is worth any number of centuries.

[Marja-Leena]

Yes, this is a wonderful acknowledment of the timelessness of the seasons in the countryside, Beth! And connecting again with your family. Happy Easter!

Oh, and I love the Breughel image, St.A!

[Brenda]

We are all seeing the same connection. I just clicked in on the comments to leave one about Breughel, and what do I see! Most amazing. There is a central subject, you and your mother fishing, in a full and busy landscape. The tone of your writing has the warmth and detail of a Breughel. The sense of timelessness especially seems to connect you and the Medieval artist across the span of centuries. A most beautiful rendition of Spring, and the closeness between you and your mother.

[Bill]

There was a new state record recently here in Missouri for a kind of golden carp.
http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/12619/

[patry]

The name, Paris Hill, New York, suggests a novel in itself. Lovely writing, Beth.