Remembering September's Woods

Remembering September’s Woods

????????????September is a month of change.??It is a month of crystallizing thoughts.??It is the palpable moment when the rich hubris of earth’s labor is beckoned to action.??Change pushes heavily upon soil and sky and cells.??Nature traces the sequence of the seasons, and the human race follows.

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????????????Past the lovely homes set deep in their landscaped lots, past the swim club with its manicured lawn and banks of pink and white impatiens, past the tennis courts and playground, is the 65-acre Crows Woods Recreation and Nature Complex.??Here, the darker woods of spruce, pine, maple, and oak cradle the freshly mown sports fields, brilliant green in the sunlight.??And beyond these man-made fields a wilder beauty unfolds: the soft carpet of trails, thick undergrowth of ginger and mallow, the murky scent of creek water, or a surprise colony of bright orange mushrooms peering up at me.?

????????????In the late 1960s, the borough of Haddonfield, New Jersey set aside this mostly-wilderness land, bordered on one side by train tracks and, on the other, just beyond the woods, by the Cooper River.??Walking along the quarter-mile road that leads to the complex, I frequently pass my neighbors, and the train to the city rushes by at its expected interval.??Along this span, a chain link fence with a double row of razor wire runs parallel to the steep embankment.??It is there to keep people away from the train tracks and the electrical transformers in their army-green housing.??The fence is there to keep people from unnecessary danger.

????????????In the spring and early summer, the air is thick with the potent aroma of honeysuckle, its woody vines weaving forcefully through the metal fence.??Sweet peas, Queen Anne’s lace, and black-eyed Susan grow wild along this stretch.??A portion of the Crows Woods site had once served as a landfill, but today there are soccer and baseball fields, hiking trails, a half-mile, black-topped track, a meeting room that serves as one of the borough’s polling places, a concession stand, restrooms, a covered picnic area, and a community garden.

????????????Still, I never tire of exploring the trails.??I pass the rope swing, suspended from a tall oak, where the younger schoolboys play?Tarzan.??In September, there is still a dappled canopy of leaves above, and the sandy soil is warm and fragrant with pine.??Stands of Joe Pye weed bend gracefully and wave their frothy plumes of pink and magenta.

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September 11, 2002.??One year after.??The muted thunder of a jet overhead, its sleek, glinting body slicing through the azure sky, is like a spring-loaded trigger.??The fierce morning winds have dissipated, but clouds flick the afternoon sunlight from bright to dim in a fraction of a moment.??A young father runs beside his tow-headed sons on the track: one wobbling on a new two-wheeler, the other skilled and confident on roller blades.??On the soccer field, schoolgirls practice their drills and heckle one another good-naturedly.??The turf is greener than it has been all summer.

Beyond the fields, the garden is heavy with its bounty of peppers, eggplant, pole beans, and fennel.??Scores of tomatoes, many spilled to the humus-rich soil, near the end of their season, already enriching next year’s crop.??Pumpkins, squash, and melon emerge in their place.??A gold-finch darts among the sunflowers and the seed heads of wild flowers whose names I haven’t yet learned.

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It has been a season of waiting: waiting for the precious rain, waiting for an unknown horror, waiting for the weight of one year to pass, so that life can begin again.

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I came to these woods, to this place, with my daughter.??This was later, much later, after looking down from my office window onto Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, where I could see the horse and carriage rigs lined up along Fifth Street, the solid, red brick and the shuttered windows of Carpenter’s Hall, the brick-enclosed beds of ivy, and the perennial garden where I liked to sit on a wooden bench and eat my lunch.?

But then workers were streaming out of the city and I was swept up by the current, too.??We were sleepwalking through the open turnstiles at the train station at Eighth and Market, the police waving us forward.??On the train, we were standing, and the silence was pierced only by the shrill, electronic bleeps of cell phones.

So, it was later, after the images of crashing airplanes, of mushroom clouds, of fires raging.??Of buildings toppling, of faces covered with ash, of people crying and stumbling and carrying others too hurt to walk.??And worse.??Others — too sad to watch again — diving from the towers and into the September brilliance.?

Then, I came to these woods when I did not want to see anymore.??But I remember.??The sky was postcard blue and the light wind and the late summer sun soothed my face.