Autumnal Forest Reflections
The meadow begins to turn 🍂
Deciduous trees shed their leaves every fall, painting the ground with warm colors. As the weather cools and the light fades, the trees know that the time for making food has come to a pause again. The chlorophyll-rich leaves begin their transition to scarlet, orange, burgundy, gold, and brown. What seems like a sudden change of character is actually a revealing. During the summer, the chlorophyll covers up the true pigments of the leaves; the green overpowers the autumnal colors while the tree is making food.
Now, when there is no longer a need for hustling, making, and growing, the true colors of the trees are revealed, right before they fall. Trees move towards rest in their most authentic form, before releasing that which does not serve them anymore; settling into their heartwood for the cold ahead. These trees are inherently cyclical, transitory in their appearance, though grounded deeply into the taproot and mycelial network.
My three year old is currently requesting the same book time and again. It follows the life of an oak tree for over 200 years; from when a young boy plants the acorn until a large storm finally knocks the tree down. What things that tree saw throughout it life! Kinship and colonization, mutual aid and greed, “enoughness” and chasing technological growth, seasons swirling around it, within it. Yet, each autumn it knew to reveal its colors and release that which it could not continue to hold.
I stand at the forest’s edge, imagining my own chlorophyll fading away from me. The boxes I thought could contain me, the expectations that covered my own real nature, drift off into the waning light. What remains feels fragile, raw, and real. I stand hand in hand with truths and oneness that have echoed throughout my life.
My body loosens in liminal spaces. Meadow on one side, forest on the other; the multitudes I contain held, but not constrained within this landscape. This ecotone an invitation to live in color and gray, not the black and white. To see the forest and the trees; the meadow and the individual wildflowers; my individuality and my kinship with all living things.
Taking a deep breath, I thank my sisters and brothers, the trees, for their presence and their model. I turn towards the house, grounded and curious.
What will I cast off in this next season? What will be the fruits of my harvest? What will I tuck into my own heartwood to feed off of this winter?
