New Day, Old Memories

Blue, blue sky over Foster Island

I did not even crop the photo, let alone tone it. I repeat: blue, blue, blue! When I first came to this area as a college freshman, I remember the skies as blue, but not this blue. Elmira in Upstate New York, USA, was solidly industrial and the skies showed it. There was a dome of pollution, visible for miles away from the highways.

Hoffman creek is totally clear today, even where it feeds into the Chemung. See the shadow under the water? That is a small tree trunk that washed down under the city. Later this summer, it will still be clean, but not clear. I let Ellie poke on the bank a while, then we moved back into the island.

Even the stray trash looked like Spring. When I was a little girl, growing up in Central Massachusetts, we would run through the soggy fields and woods in the Spring, getting soaked and cold in the process. Being very little and full of imagination, we would invent stories to go with the very rare pieces of trash we would find. Often we wouldn't even recognize their function. No doubt there were some pretty old items from earlier settlements. But we would hide them again, to keep them for ourselves, never to retrieve them.

This little bit of greenery was the real treasure, today. Lovely lime and chartreuse buds, and tiny leaves. Everywhere.

All soon to be covered by a fresh blanket of snow.

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Little Pond