Long Pond Journal--October, November, December
October
Tucked between dreams is a place somewhere in the New Hampshire woods, by name a pond, by size perhaps a small lake, shaped like an elongated key with an island where the hole in the head for a chain might be. From the southern shore looking north across the waters I can see low, rolling hills much as they must have been for the past hundred years, with stands of maple and oak turning red or yellow or orange as the fall advances. Here and there, also, the white trunks of birches stand in chalk line relief against evergreens, which take no notice of the dying days.
If the way was clear it might take an hour to walk around Long Pond, but in places the brush grows too thick to pass. Water lilies clutter the eastern and western shallows with emerald leaves the size of dinner plates, and roots like tentacles snagging the oars of anyone foolhardy enough to row into them. I wonder if during summer nights, when the air is humid and the light has settled, whether frogs sing out from hidden places among the lily pads.
A loon makes his home here, I am told, although by now he has gone for the season. I am left to imagine those evenings when he paddled unperturbed across the pond, with black and gray plumage half visible in the shadows and sharp bill pointed forward like the prow of a frigate. Wait long enough and I would expect to hear from him that call which fades in the dusk, yet lingers in the mind. Cormorants still ply these waters, though, and bob heads in that clownish way they have. They chase ripples and vanish beneath the surface, only to pop up a minute later, yards away—the lucky ones with something scaly and slimy flopping in their beaks.
Late at night I stand on a floating dock. Shreds of fog drift in the crystalline air, which transmits all sound with clarity. The water, glassy in its calmness, reflects starlight raining down from a sky too dark to believe. Until now I knew only a city sky filled with noise and electric haze, for my home is Boston. The Pleiades are rising in the east. Just over the hills the Big Dipper shimmers from turbulence in the atmosphere. I spy the few constellations I know and whisper the names of myth: Cassiopeia, Draco, Cygnus. Then I am lost; too many stars fill this country sky which, until I learn my way, is unfamiliar, elemental and beyond human scale.
November
Rain had been falling all day, but now it has stopped. I tiptoe outside to check the night sky, which is overcast and lighted by a young moon setting behind some trees. The ground is damp, and sandy soil crunches beneath my feet while the air carries scents of wet leaves, bark and mulch. A smudge of light perches on the western horizon—Concord, the nearest city of any size. Sheet lightning flashes in the distance, silently illuminating the heavy clouds scudding away. Above me a few clear patches are opening and bright stars are shining through. I think I hear footsteps, then realize it is only a pump draining water from the basement. After a while I go back inside where it is warm and dry, and fall into bed.
Hours later, unable to sleep, I walk outside again. The sky has been swept clear and the moon is down. I recognize new constellations and follow the faint band of the Milky Way from horizon to horizon. For the first time I trace the shape of Gemini, then skip to Taurus, then to a squashed pentagram of stars which is one end of Pisces. From the front yard Orion is visible in the clearing between trees. I happen to be gazing in the right place at the right time when a meteor scratches its trail of light before vanishing, as if someone had blown out a candle.
December
By now Long Pond is snow bound and, if the month has been chilly enough, perhaps glazed over with ice not yet thick enough to walk on. Skeletal trees wait for the renewal which is still months away, and their branches clatter in the wind. Sometimes in Boston, at dinner, I study star charts because the skies are bad or the weather is cold. A bookmark with words by Longfellow keeps my place among the pages:
Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels
When I stood outside in the darkness by Long Pond, I knew that to be true. Just as I know the Big Dipper, wheeling its way around the North Star with sidereal precision, is poised upside down in the pre-dawn hours, its bowl spilling memories ladled from an earlier time, from a warmer season. I remember that sun setting behind the hills, its rays skimming the pond, refracting through the surface and emerging with the cool, bluish cast of evening. At that moment a gold luminance that originates only from water borne light had saturated the very air. A perfect sky arched overhead, cloudless and deepening. Most of all I remember the silence—broken only by the sound, soft and rhythmic, of a rower, the splash of her oars cupping the water, drops spilling from the blades like jewels.
