Yellow

I walk around Peters Hill in the Arboretum pretty much every morning. One highlight - in fact I've altered my route to catch it - is the ginkgo trees. There's an entire grove of them and they are now an impressive yellow, with leaves on the ground echoing the leaves on the trees.

The Arboretum is a curious place. At once a peaceful haven for the natural world and a curated collection of trees and shrubs. So this grove of ginkgo trees might never manifest in a forest in this way, yet here they are.

I think of my years living in the woods and sometimes the Arb feels a bit stuffy to me, a bit academic - it is a part of Harvard, after all. Yet, those feelings don’t last. The overwhelming sense of the priority of the natural world (and the gentleness with which humans intervene here) is the dominant feeling.

Especially in the early morning, as the sun is rising…