Colors

The Sprain Brook Parkway Fall Colors

Colors

Bright colors.  Red, gold, yellow and still some green were like eye candy in every direction.  There were even punctuations of water, crossed by artfully designed bridges.  They seemed to act as picture frames for the bright, orange sunset just to the west, while driving south on the Sprain Brook Parkway toward New York City.  It was all the perfect color pallet to validate the end of one day’s event and the beginning of new relationships.

The colorful display confirmed the feeling that the different colors radiating from a variety of trees create much more pleasure for the eye than summer’s more monotone greenery.  Just as the coming together of two different families had done during the day’s earlier wedding which was enveloped by nature’s colorful display.  Both the wedding and nature were a varied display of differences and similarities.

The differences between the two families seemed to be as vast as the surrounding forest at first.  The languages were different, the national origins were not the same and the cultures disparate.  Other observers, passing by on their Saturday outings, out to enjoy nature’s magnificent colors, may have been as fascinated by the two differing groups of wedding revelers, gathered under a large pavilion in Franklin D. Roosevelt State Park, as they were by the glowing leaves they’d come to experience.  If that was the case, it would have been the result of the brevity of their observation.  After all, reaching the apex of colorful foliage takes time; patience and seasonal progression.  Such was the human dynamic during this late October wedding and celebration.

As the bride and groom stood next to a flower-laced arbor, headed by an officiator, there was a dynamic separation.  The groom’s guests stood on one side and the bride’s guests stood on the other.  Both sets of eyes expressed uncertainty.

It was a natural insecurity of the unknown. A recognition of dissimilarity.  Even with the obvious certainty of purpose and similarities of all attending the event.  Both of which were clarified upon the conclusion of both spoken and emotional vows composed by the man and woman newly wed.  It was a truly a new beginning.  The beginning of the melding of people as part of a greater kaleidoscope so fittingly expressed by the beauty of differing fall colors, welcoming all into the perfect Thanksgiving-portrait-like view-scape surrounding them.

The desire to capture the moment, to become joined with it, began in earnest with an explosion of applause and joyous verbal expression.  The photographer then activated further work of inclusion as attendees were formed into fresh, assimilated groups, posing as one for the very first time.  Then, they all enjoyed food and drink in unison.  They even danced around the youth of the moment, which was commenced by an uninhibited five-year-old boy who took it upon himself to boost the music’s volume, to match the vivid color, and dance with abandon.  

Soon, people who didn’t share the same first language or culture began to imitate the boy’s imaginative and unrehearsed dance moves. It all produced bright smiles on every face.  It was a combination that led to warm embraces, a universal gesture of love, of as a sign of complete unification; the completion of a new, broader and more colorful portrait of thanksgiving.

The most beautiful thanksgiving pictures integrate the use of differing color. Bright colors.  Reds, golds, yellows and still some greens to provide variety for the eye.  They even contain punctuations of water, crossed by artfully designed bridges which act as picture frames for bright, orange sunsets posing in the western sky.  Perfect, varied pallets validate the end of one season as well as the beginning of new relationships between different peoples becoming one through offered love, understanding and of course, enhanced color.