Masks
“They’re not dishonest…they’re just young.”
And then my memory stepped sideways one pace to cross twenty-some odd years ago to a drive through the mountains of Colorado.
We were making our way back from a weekend with friends and were several hours past everything we could think to talk about. Some fell asleep to pass the time while others fell to watching sunlight and shadow take turns passing over our windows. I just laid my head back and let the brightness of the sun and the low vibration of the engine affect a meditation.
Then quietly, to himself, my friend David muttered, “…so much beauty in the cycle of death.” My dropping eyelids snapped open wide and I looked not at him, but at the aspen trees flying past the windshield.
I loved what he said, how he saw it, and that he said nothing more. Nor did I.
Nothing else to say.
I’ve never forgotten that moment for the combination of speed and color and comment. And every Autumn, every single Autumn, I tell it to myself again, as invocation, and let go the summer in order to embrace the coming death of winter.
But not before the truth comes to the fore.
Did you know the Autumn colors are the true colors? The green is the mask. Sameness with just a little variation, which at first is fine. But it’s only at the threshold of death and relinquishing and leavetaking that the true colors come forward. So much brilliance and diversity right before they, exhausted, release themselves.
And fall.
If it’s true that it’s always darkest before the dawn, then it’s equally true that it’s always brightest before the dusk. Late September and early October has always been an invigorating but sort of bitter stretch for me. Invigorating because the colors…the skies, the leaves, the grasses, the flower—even the smells…deepen. A super-saturation in every sense. One last burst of Self and the whole landscape looks almost fake. And then, the young green leaves have done all they can do. Bold but expended, their essence wanes and bleeds to show the verdure for what it is. That is, a mask covering authentic nature.
And bitter because it’s this final exhale of life that ushers in the coming cold and the incubation of deep winter. In order to cycle onward to the hope of spring. Living, always dying…dying, ever birthing.
Beta Male looked at the trees as I explained the science of it with a bit of Life-Lesson to keep him wondering.
“So…what you’re saying is that the trees aren’t showing what they really are.”
“That’s right.”
“So they’re dishonest.”
Smile.
“They’re not dishonest…they’re just young.”
I would said to Beta: They’re not dishonest. They’re are discovering themselves. They’re are still growing like you do. Like we all do.
An outstanding response, Juan! Thank you for that.
well said, T.
I want to walk that trail in your second picture. Where is it?
Mike, it’s one of my favorites: Devil’s Head, near Salida, Colorado. It’s a moderate-level 1.5 mile hike with easy switch-backs. The beginning section (in the photographs) is the part I like best…looks and feels like very old-growth forest right out of Lord Of The Rings.
Lovely, yet alien to my northeastern eyes.
Our area in now awash in color, and I forgot that simple fact about leaves.
Thanks for the reminder.