The Aesthetics of Environment

Four: Scenes from a Connecticut Landscape: Four Studies in Descriptive Aesthetics

Scenes from a Connecticut Landscape: Four Studies in Descriptive Aesthetics Chapter Four ~ A SPRING DRIVE IN THE RAIN Turning off the active secondary highway onto a narrow side road marks an abrupt change. My speed slows to a third ofwhat it was, for the space is narrower and more constricted. The visible road ahead shortens to a bare hundred yards, its surface undulating unevenly as it rises to a bump and then turns sharply right. The shift in movement and space, the change ofscene are as sudden and striking as opening a door offa wide, anonymous corridor. As soon as I make the turn I am greeted by a white colonial farmhouse , a modest classic, parallel to neither road but canted at a gracious angle. Not prominent from the highway, it stands as a welcoming sentinel to the entering driver. Immediately beyond lie a small barn and a grassy yard. A hammock hangs white against the damp red of the barn and the rich spring green of the grass. This is the start ofa small episode ofthe ordinary but full quality ofdaily life in a fortunate place, occurrences often unnoticed even here. How many wonders all about are invisible through inattention? The road draws me ahead slowly, each curve beckoning but joining with the unevenness ofits surface to make me drive carefully. Spring comes late to the hills ofnorthwest Connecticut, and the steady rain 40 41 of this day in early May will leave great changes on the bursts ofblossoms and the half-opened leaves of the shrubs and trees. These times of transition are to be dwelled in rather than ignored in anticipating theirgoal. And spring, most ofall such periods, moves with regrettable rapidity, unlike the lingering ofwinter's course and the slow maturing ofsummer. We give a blind face to rain as we do to winter, both falsely considered as inconveniences, leading us to ignore the condiments that subtly flavor the season's inevitable procession. This day ofrain has its own temptation, and the steady downpour gives my brief detour a special quality. The sound on the roof of my car is an auditory pointillism, punctuated by the regular beat of the windshield wipers and supported by the gentle undertone of the engine . They become a thickly textured accompaniment to the sights, movements, and sensations of my drive. Rain is a transformative. Everything changes-the light, the surfaces , the colors. The rain alters even space, making it denser, more translucent than transparent. My road begins with the bare shafts of trees whose high, thick canopy has cleared the underbrush and left them flanking the road in a natural stockade fence. The dampness turns the trunks darker, more solid and unyielding, while the rain accents the texture ofthe bark and makes the mossy patches more visible. A few large, glistening, gray boulders lie on either side of the road, some blotched with pale green-gray lichens and the thicker, richer green ofmoss. Bordering the road are low stone walls, not carefully cultivated constructions but rounded ridges ofrock thrown together from the surrounding land. Stone is the richest crop in these parts; here especially it rises from the ground everywhere. Harvested into walls, these lines ofstone appear everywhere, running even through the deepest woods, a mute sign ofhands from the past. It is hard to believe that the fields and pastures they bounded once occupied the forested, rock-strewn ground all about. These stone walls are not the imposing dolmens and menhirs ofBrittany or the enigmatic monolithic heads of Easter Island. The walls are bound to the ground, not the heavens. They signify not aspiration but accomplishment. Monuments to the strain and sweat that put them there, the walls are signs oflives and worlds 42 Scenes from a Connecticut Landscape long gone. They remain as humble but enduring testimony to the hard labor ofsurvival in the hills ofNew England. Soon rural mailboxes signal houses hidden at first by the trees. These houses are wooden, even the new ones, and most of them preserve traditional designs. I come upon the dense plantings of a small nursery; next I notice a tiny pond near the road, its house half-hidden by the thick growth beyond it. The scene begins to open up on both sides now, and in the gray air the lines of rain become more visibledense , luminous parallels, as if drawn by a child's hand. A white...