The inviting beauty of Greene County

We’re kind of busy for one thing or another after returning from the color-chasing trip in New England and haven’t gone out to look for the local colors until this past weekend; we might have missed the peak, but a beauty passed her prime is a beauty still. These photos can attest to it.

The road less traveled the more beautiful; the area less populated the more gorgeous. No wonder President Theodore Roosevelt said at Grand Canyon on May 6, 1903,

“Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.”

Jer-Yuan Tsai All these photos were taken within 10 or 15 minutes drive from our house.

Katy Tsai 旅遊歸來，忙於雜務，沒有馬上出去看看本鎮的秋葉。頂多一個禮拜就秋風秋雨落葉滿地。警覺秋景漸去，才出門照幾張相片。大家都說上禮拜最美! 其實有幾個地方也還可以欣賞的，越少人住的地方越美麗。都是人為砍伐破壞自然景象吧! 

黃壬辰 您住仙境旁，我居夜市邊。不論環境事，偕為逍遙仙。 

 

Beauty in our neck of the woods

Thia photo was taken standing in our front yard today.

The tree in glory and the old glory

We took a break from working in the old and new garden last weekend driving around Waynesburg and West Greene area to see what Greene County can offer. I’ll post these foliage photos soon.  Here is the one with a lone tree in glory and the old glory.  The legend of "Old Glory" for American flag dated back to before Civil War era.

Emily Dickinson on the beginning of autumn

Peggy said “Emily Dickinson, with her poems of this season, must have the right words for the equnox”; she did have a poem to mark the beginning of the autumn, which is supposed to be today/tonight (Septemer 22/23).  We took this photo at Fredericktown area 3 autumns ago, I said “the language to describe this blaze of colors is not yet invented”, Emily never ran out of words, “Some Dyer of a distant tree / Resumes his gaudy industry.”

Summer begins to have the look

Peruser of enchanting Book

Reluctantly but sure perceives

A gain upon the backward leaves –

Autumn begins to be inferred

By millinery of the cloud

Or deeper color in the shawl

That wraps the everlasting hill.

The eye begins its avarice

A meditation chastens speech

Some Dyer of a distant tree

Resumes his gaudy industry.

Conclusion is the course of All

A most to be perennial

And then elude stability

Recalls to immortality.

Miles to go before I sleep

While walking among the breathtaking foliage, I began to think that this winding country road in Greene County [where we live] must have inspired Robert Frost to write,

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

Katy took this picture in our foliage tour in 2007, for about two-week period, we can see this every fall. This is about 10-15 minutes drive from where we live. I am sure this was what Robert Frost saw in 1920 when he wrote,

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day! Y
et knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

At age of 86 Robert Frost read his poems at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in 1961. Somehow we haven’t had a national laureate present in the Presidential inauguration in recent years. Carl Sandburg spoke at the Joint Session of Congress on Lincoln’s 150th birthday (2/12/1959), but we didn’t have a Lincoln Scholar of Sandburg’s caliber for Lincoln’s 200th birthday last year. Current Harvard President, Drew Gilpin Faust is an eminent Civil War era scholar, but is not considered a Lincoln scholar.

My cousin, 陳老薑, commented in Facebook, “This Frost's poem is one of my favourites. I once took a slide of similar scene in an autumn woods in the Netherlands.”