Time for Change

I've continued this week to be drawn to the mesmerizing patterns and colors of the turning leaves. Each one, a unique opportunity to study how chaos and order play in harmony with each other. I even went out and bought a very fine brush, which is definitely out of character, so I could more intricately paint the patterns I saw.  

This time always passes so quickly. The aspen groves yell from up on the mountain side, "come look at me!" to all of us going about our busy lives down in town. I try and heed that call at least once a season. And I am always rewarded when I do. I remember one year, after clocking out from work, I drove straight up to Lockett Meadow and just sat in the tall grass, gazing at the vast Aspen grove as the sun went behind the mountain. Its beauty is hard to describe. It moved something in me because I actually cried while sitting there, and then laughed because I thought that only happened in the movies. 

Aspens are always the first tree to come back after a fire. This past summer, I hiked a trail I hadn't been on in a few years since a fire tore through that landscape. Not knowing what to expect, I was nervous it’d be sad to no longer see the old growth yellow-belly Ponderosas that used to shade the trail. While they were mostly gone, burnt sticks in their place, the new growth of the young Aspens was so thick I had to turn sideways to walk the trail. It was a carpet of waist-height bright green Aspen saplings with 25 foot black charcoal tree skeletons poking up through. Although a fire completely changed that landscape a few years ago, now a new kind of fire lights up every year in the fall. A sea of yellow, orange, and red leaves quaking in the wind.

I won't mis out this year. Because the busyness of life can wait. Our lives no longer follow yearly cycles but our world still does. The turning of the leaves is the seasonal alarm clock signaling to us it is time to slow down and ground ourselves. I will listen.