Days go by so fast now. It's barely sunrise when John gets up, already 8:30 a.m.; and when I roll out of bed (spurred on by the sound of coffee grinding) it's a feeble light that makes up the sky. This reluctant glow loses its nerve around three; by four the day's all but done, as least as far as the light is concerned.
After reading online about seasonal depression, I quickly ran outside, jumped on my bike, and rode out to Humbolthain. The park is in the “west,” an old bunker and rubble hill with a monument, erected, I think, in the 60s, to Berlin's long-past divide. During the summer we'd laze here amid dozens of overflowing Turkish families talking, laughing, barbecuing and playing soccer riotously. The hill itself rises in snail-like concentric circles, climbing up the back of the bunker which offers one of the better views of Berlin around. When the park was in full leaf, you couldn't see from one path to another; one moment you'd find yourself lost amid a tangle of oak and birch only to turn a corner and discover a wide field filled with shrieking children.
Today the park is a skeleton, the same hilly maze but without the mystery. The fields are littered with orange and yellow leaves, slick with yesterday's rains. Naked branches like so many fingers reach upwards, as if to try to catch the remaining light of the day. I couldn't help but think that if the leaves could go, perhaps the trees could too—and then nothing would be left, just wet mud and useless paths. (It's the same thought I mull when riding through Tiergarten, as it's already on its second life; during the war it was completely deforested by frozen Berliners seeking firewood.)
Such are the fears of a winter novice. Our sickly horse chestnut tree in the courtyard holds on stubbornly to a handful of leaves on its outermost limbs; at least it's not launching angry chestnut projectiles any more. Perhaps that was its way of protesting the indignity of a coatless winter.
