Category: trees

Edging Closer for Company

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The trees are coming into their winter bareness, the only green is the lichen on their branches. Against the hemlocks, the rain is falling in dim, straight lines… This is the time of year when all the houses have come out of the woods, edging closer to the roads as if for company.
Verlyn Klinkenborg “The Rain It Raineth”

The deciduous trees in our part of the country have all been stripped bare, having come through two rain and wind storms in the last week.  It forces typically leaf-hidden homes out of camouflage and I’m once again startled at the actual proximity of our neighbors.  It isn’t as obvious in the summer given the tree buffer everyone has carefully planted.  Now we’re reminded once again we are not alone and actually never have been.

Even the mountains that surround us from the northwest to the southeast seem closer when the trees are bare and new snow has settled on their steep shoulders.

We think we have autonomy all wrapped up but it takes the storms of autumn to remind us we are unwrapped and vulnerable, stark naked, in desperate need of company when darkness comes early, the snow flies and the lights flicker.

Welcoming Heart

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Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come–
Chinese Proverb

I need reminding that what I offer from my heart reflects what I will receive there.  If I’m grumbling and breaking like a dying vine instead of a green tree, my discouragement entangled by the cobwebs and mildew of worry, then no singing bird will come.

So much better to nurture the singers of joy and gladness with a heart budding green with gratitude, anticipating and expectant.

The welcome mat is out and waiting.

Any time now…

Transcendent Moments

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“Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.”
~ John Milton

Our farm yard looked like it had a retro remodel update this past week by heavy winds and rain, the green sod now covered with a mottled yellow brown shag carpet of leaves.   This transformation is temporary as this new carpet will soon start to rot under the burden of endless days of wintry drizzle and freezing weather.

Today’s epiphany:  only 8 months ago, none of these leaves even existed.  They were mere potential in bud form, about to burst and grow in a silent awesome explosion of green and chlorophyll.   After their brief tenure as shade and protection and fuel factory for their tree, last week they rained to the ground in torrents, letting go of the only (and so transient) security they had known.

Now they become compost, returning their substance to the soil to feed the roots of the trees that gave them life to begin with.

Recycled by transcendent death,
so momentary,
so momentous.

Companions in Adversity

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

When shrieked
The bleak November winds, and smote the woods,
And the brown fields were herbless, and the shades
That met above the merry rivulets
Were spoiled, I sought, I loved them still; they seemed
Like old companions in adversity.
~William Cullen Bryant  in A Winter Piece

When the winds start to howl
and leaves are flying through the air
like birds on the wing heading south,
when branches snap
and trunks bend to the point of breaking
when the ground is hopelessly barren
and the hills are nothing
but continuing shades of gray
descending from the sky
when the sun disappears for days
and the rains are continuous

I love it all still;

knowing we are in this together
when the times are tough and
the mud is thick
and obstacles fall in our way
even to the end of time
as we travel this road
like old companions
broken, withered, splintered
but sharing the journey
wherever it blows us.

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

BriarCroft in Autumn

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“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”
– Emily Dickinson

“Lo! sweeten’d with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson

“Bare are the places where the sweet flowers dwelt.
What joy sufficient hath November felt?
What profit from the violet’s day of pain?
– Helen Hunt Jackson, Autumn Sonnet “O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being.
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead,
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.”
– Percy Bysshe Shelley

“How silently they tumble down
And come to rest upon the ground
To lay a carpet, rich and rare,
Beneath the trees without a care,
Content to sleep, their work well done,
Colors gleaming in the sun.
At other times, they wildly fly
Until they nearly reach the sky.
Till all the trees stand stark and bare.
Exhausted, drop to earth below
To wait, like children, for the snow.”
 –   Elsie N. Brady, Leaves

“I saw the lovely arch
Of rainbow span the sky,
The gold sun burning
As the rain swept by.”
– Elizabeth Coatsworth, November

“Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem:
There’s not a leaf that falls upon the ground
But holds some joy of silence or of sound
Some spirits begotten of a summer dream.”
– Laman Blanchard

“The mountain air is fresh at the dusk of day;
The flying birds in flocks return.
In these things there lies a deep meaning;
I want to tell it, but have forgotten the words.”
– Tao Yuan Ming

“A fine rain was falling, and the landscape was that of autumn.  The sky was hung with various shades of gray, and mists hovered about the distant mountains – a melancholy nature.  The leaves were falling on all sides like the last illusions of youth under the tears of irremediable grief.  Every landscape is, as it were, a state of the soul, and whoever penetrates into both is astonished to find how much likeness there is in each detail.”
– Henri Frederic Amiel

“Even if something is left undone, everyone must take time to sit still and watch the leaves turn.”
– Elizabeth Lawrence

BriarCroft in Spring

BriarCroft in Summer

BriarCroft in Winter

BriarCroft at Year’s End

Leafy Ghosts

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photo by Josh Scholten

The stripped and shapely
Maple grieves
The ghosts of her
Departed leaves…

And yet the world,
In its distress,
Displays a certain
Loveliness.
~John Updike

The maple’s leaves have let go
in the winds and rain
in a bid for freedom,
swirling to new adventure
and ending in
soft landing
one atop another.

There they lay
in leafy graveyard
among others
seeking release
from branching bondage,
each shaped differently
in designed diversity.

The collected pile slowly
assimilates in color and wilt.
Once distinctive foliage,
so green and grand,
from oak, chestnut,
walnut,  birch
and maple settle in
together at last.

In death
mirroring each other
just as birthing leaf buds
appeared indistinguishable
a mere eight months ago.

My eye now only sees
a mosaic carpet of jumbled
ghostly remnants,
dressing the ground
as they once adorned branches.
No longer do they
lift and dance in the breeze,
no more chemical exchange
of sunlight for fuel.

Distressed and done,
fallen and sodden,
each one lies
alone
together,
a chlorophyll coda
of lost loveliness.

Letting It Go

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photo by Josh Scholten

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

photo by Josh Scholten

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
~Mary Oliver, “In Blackwater Woods”

photo by Josh Scholten

Knocked Breathless

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photo by Josh Scholten

I saw the tree with lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where. the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.
~Annie Dillard

“I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.”
~Annie Dillard

photo by Josh Scholten

So much of my time is spent fixated on what I control (or don’t):
what I see/hear/taste/feel/do/want/need.
It is all too much about me.

Instead how must I appear to my Maker as I begin each day:
my utter astonishment at waking up,
true gratitude for each breathless moment,
surely awed by how resonant I peal when struck senseless

by life.

Responding

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photo by Josh Scholten

And that is just the point… how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That’s the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. “Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?”
~Mary Oliver

Some mornings it is impossible to stay a silent observer of the world.  It demands a response.
The overnight wind and rain have pulled down nearly every leaf, the ground is carpeted with the dying evidence of last spring’s rebirth, the dropping temperatures robing the surrounding foothills and peaks in a bright new snow covering.

There can be no complacency in witnessing this startling transition in progress.   It blusters, rips, drenches, encompasses, buries. Nothing remains as it was.

And here I am, alive.
Awed.
Responding.

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

 

 

Changing Clothes

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photo by Josh Scholten

The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools.
Henry Beston

The change of seasons this week offered no gradual transition to ease us gently into autumn– three months of daily sun and balmy temperatures became gray, rainy, windy, stormy cuddle-down cold overnight.   It is a terrible shock to our physiology as well as our wardrobe.  Sweaters and jackets that have not seen the light of day for months are suddenly front and center in the closet.  Sandals are shoved way to the back once again.  Only last week I was still sneaking out to the barn to do morning chores in my pajamas and slippers but now am trussed up in my Carhartts, gloves and muck boots.

Tough as it is reconcile to shorter days and chilly temperatures, I do appreciate the absolute drama of it all.  Golden leaves dance up and down in the gusts, as if searching for the exactly perfect landing and forever resting spot.  The fallen walnuts inside their round green husks are scattered everywhere underfoot well hidden among the leaves, making navigating are yard’s pathways hazardous, especially in the dark.  I’ve never been good at walking on marbles and these are ping pong ball size marbles.

So all bundled up I pick my way carefully to the barn, wanting not to be embarrassed by falling flat on my face and or by watching trees stripped naked right before my eyes.   As they unceremoniously shed their leafy coats to reveal their skinny skeletons, I’m piling on layers on over my…. layers.

I’m treading on their sacred leavings, much like inadvertently walking across poorly marked graves at a cemetery.   It is truly holy ground.

photo by Josh Scholten

The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn

~John Muir