Nature Blog #9: Turning Gray

Tuesday, November 10, 2009
2:30pm

Today is gray. Gray skies, gray light, gray air. It feels like the end of something. I hear a dishwasher, cars, and a bus station's mechanical rings in the distant. They accompany the gray perfectly. The leaves of my honey locust are now dried amber flakes on the ground. One of its branches has snapped; I can see that now with the leaves all gone. I wonder how it snapped. It seems recent, but I can’t remember any storms. Broken in two places, it’s holding on by mere splinters.

I feel vulnerable sitting up here on my balcony, no longer shielded by the lush foliage that once filled my locusts, oak, and pine. The brightness that used to surround me is now dimmed and layers the ground below, a soft orange still catching my eye. Instead, today, I am surrounded by work. Reading, writing, commenting, creating…I wish they would comfort me like these trees once did. Instead I am opening a little more to the world. Letting my words reveal parts of my life, parts holding tightly inside like the breaking branch to its roots. It is overwhelming to reach such places in writing; it feels like I’ve just spent the last 24 hours in therapy. Questioning my internal thoughts, analyzing my answers, searching, seeking, standing strong. I am tired.

The last of the dying leaves shimmy down through the branches. I can hear them rustle to the ground. I think they are squirrels at first. Look to my right. They are just leaves. Delicate enough to crumple in a fist, light enough to be taken by the wind.

I used to think trees were ugly when they lost all their leaves. But as I’ve gotten older I appreciate the bareness they reveal. I like to look deep into their cracks and crevices, pointing out lines that turn so beautifully, it’s hard to imagine they're natural. Without flames of disguising leaves covering up these trunks, I see the tree for what it truly is, its real form, its insides, its core.

It could be any time of day. The sun is not out to shine its biological clock. The volume of cars and the lack of filled parking spaces is the only thing that tells me the hour, without looking at my watch. If I were out in the middle of the woods, I don’t think I’d care the time. I’d wait for the darkness to roll in, search for the last gray light, and follow the bare trees home.