The Dancing Leaves

Leaving Springfield, Massachusetts this morning we drove the MA Turnpike east toward Boston, then north on I-495 around Boston, through Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and then I-95 into Old Orchard Beach, Maine.  Today was a short drive compared to yesterday, but the scenery, even along the Interstates, was breath-taking.  As Albert Camus wrote, “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”  John Donne expresses a similar notion when he writes,  “No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.”  William Cullen Bryant said it yet another way, “Autumn…the year’s last, loveliest smile.”  Nathaniel Hawthorne spoke for me when he wrote, “I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house,” I’d rather be on the road.  And we had sunshine today—and unseasonable warmth—as we drove along the highway observing the leaves in brilliant costumes dance.

The one red leaf, the last of its clan,

That dances as often as dance it can,

Hanging so light, and hanging so high,

On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

We have arrived in Maine just in time to see the leaves dance one last dance.  Some trees are already bare—their leaves now forming a quilt to warm the earth in the winter chill and snow.  Other trees are still clothed with dancing leaves of many hues.  It is a wonderful sight.

I checked at the Maine Visitors Center and again with the Campground hostess as to where I might find the best lobster.  Both recommended the Lobster Shack near Portland Head.  We will try it tomorrow at lunchtime.  For dinner tomorrow we will try the second recommendation, the Salt Surf restaurant very near to where we are staying.

“Dance, dance, wherever you may be, for I am the Lord of the dance, said He!”

Massachusetts Dawning