I visited my favorite maple tree today

to read its timetable. And even though big leaf maples have long ago turned yellow, this stalwart cousin gives not a hint of the season change in progress. This tall slender tree looks as fresh as it did in May or June or any of the green-leafed months. But this will be my fourth autumn with this maple, so I know the glorious orange ideas it harbors in its veins. Waiting perhaps until all others have put on their pallid shows, this maple will then dazzle with a flabbergasting display of audacity.

what brilliant ideas lurk in your veins? click to enlarge

If I lived with this tree I’d make a point to study it day by day, looking for the first tinge of change—the first note of the overture, perhaps from the lower register of a flute. But this tree grows across the bay in another town, an old friend I must set an intention to see. I will make a point to visit on a crisp clear afternoon when the vivid tangerine leaves will flicker in the breeze off the water, pointed lobes aiming at a bold cerulean sky—
stars reanimated as if to announce: All that turned before was prelude; now it is autumn.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• What brilliant ideas lurk in your veins wanting to burst forth from your skin?
• What kind of cold shock to your system will it take to share your strongest colors?
• How could you be more audacious?

twisted

I also saw a very different tree on that trip, displaced and living in a plastic pot in a grocery store parking lot. A six-foot juniper, it’s growth had been thwarted and contorted into a mannered spiral. I love naturally occurring spirals—a whelk, a fern unfurling, a grouse dancing—deep-rooted archetypal images. But this poor tree is most unnatural, its every impulse to thrive bent and twisted to some human design.

It reminds me of the Victorian era when topiary was all the rage, a time when man’s dominion over nature was assumed and blindly trumpeted. Of course, this has been proved false—Nature will always win. Despite our worst efforts against her, the earth will survive. She may need to reinvent herself as a warmer, drier planet and birth new life forms to populate herself. But it is her body we crawled out of, and she’ll still be present after we’ve fouled ourselves out of existence. Some spark of life will prevail.

But what of this sad tree?

I am drawn to it as I would be to a lost puppy wandering the streets. It awaits someone with $65.99 who finds it beautiful and will take it away from this asphalt marketplace. I touch its rough foliage and caress the exposed trunk. If I thought I could free this tree to be a simple juniper again I would rescue it, but it’s too late. I follow this false spiral with my hand and wonder: How can we know that this contrivance wasn’t painful, a visit to an arboreal footbinder? How can we be sure this tree isn’t crying for release? I grasp the slender trunk and love it however briefly. It’s the least I can do.

contemplations

• How many of us have reformatted ourselves to fit into lives of unnatural design?
• Who among us has grown distorted and bent to ideas she doesn’t favor?

downloadable affirmation card

click image to enlarge, right click to save and print

You might enjoy meeting some wild cherry trees here.