Susquehanna Meditations: First Frost

First Frost

In the pantheon of the fantastic fantastical, you will find both gods and demigods, as well as in the lower echelon the more local but still celebrated lesser deities.  Gods and demigods know no bounds but these chimera and daimons are bound to certain places. 

The gods, highest of the high, are Mother Nature, Father Time, Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny.  These are the Titans to whom all reverence is due.  

The lesser chimeras and daimons appear in folktale, lore, and legend:  the Jersey Devil, Big Foot, Sasquatch, Nessy, Champy, Mothman, the Fouke Monster of Boggy Creek, plus western Pennsylvania’s own Green Man, the Phantom Panther of the Northern Tier, and the Goblin of Easton. 

I, friends, rank between the two tiers among my fellow demi-gods:  Sandman, Bogeyman, Cupid.

I am Jack Frost and you can usually expect me to visit the Susquehanna valley in the middle of October.   I am a reasonably predictable, punctual fellow, though sometimes, despite your frost advisories, I try to trick you and come unexpectedly. 

Some dislike me for what I leave behind.  Many really dislike me for what my visitation portends.  Some dislike me and name me a nuisance, especially when they must rummage through the garage to find the ice-scraper for their windshield. 

But please, ignore not my virtues, dismiss not my benefits despite how I may inconvenience you.   Mine is the transient frost more than the lasting freeze.  Mind is the thin cat-ice, the brevity of breath puffed, the hoarfrost, the ice crystals that melt in the hour.  Mine is the white dew, the translucent dew, mine is the tracks of tiny bird feet and mine is the crackling grass leaving behind the imprint of shoe or hoof, mine are the fallen leaves that crunch till sunshine warms. 

Who else but me can so delicately glaze the twigs and branches of the Flowering Crabapple in your front yard?  You admire this tree mostly in spring when it bursts forth in blossom hues of red.  For the rest of spring and summer you complain about its gnarly limbs and squishy crabapples which your trek inside and smudge into your carpet or Persian rug.  Still, I visit to shred the tree of the last of its leaves,  You awaken, look out the bedroom window, and again favor this tree, for now I have done my magic, now the branches and twigs shine forth encased in glistening crystal. 

Yes, I kill.  I kill quickly.  But as some poet-preacher wrote, there is a time for killing and a time for healing. Sometimes, friends, they are the same.  Killing and healing.  Healing and killing.   When hasn’t life been purchased from death?

Who else controls the aphid and other pests? 

Who else tells the mum thank but now it is time to rest?

Who else brings the cooling to the bedded-down bulbs and prepares them for the time when they will push up through the soil to burst forth together in the beauty of yellow and orange, white and red.  I help make the dingy, brown bulb release itself in a flourish of color.  Nature is not content unless it reaches toward the light.

Who else invites the lawn to soak me in so gently, so slow, so deep?  Soon enough the freeze will come and the earth will close up.  Receive me now while you may. 

Who else excites the bird to swoop in flocks upon the tasty lawn to help fatten them with worm and bug for the winter to come? 

Who else helps give weight so the acorns drop and autumn leaves fall so that squirrels can nest and gather up food on the ground where it is far more reachable for little them?  Scurry now, winter will come soon enough. 

Who else encourages the White Tail Deer to move from ruminating on corn and soybean and move into then hardier fare of the forests?  Each brings to each.

Who else but me?

I arrive so you may prepare.