For weeks, it felt, the skies were relentlessly gray. We got a little snow, but more rain, and even more freezing rain. The snow cover flattened and adhered to the ground in a thin crust of ice. No bountiful white drifts, no blue skies, no blinding expanses. Not even any exhilaratingly cold temperatures: it hovered endlessly around 32 degrees, damp, raw, and dispiriting.
My mind filled up with leaves. I ran my hand down long branches of feathering maple leaves, brushed hanging clusters of them. Membranous, soft, thin. I rose up through green clouds of them. I saw where insects had eaten them. I watched the sun set behind them, lighting up their veins and their visible cells. They shifted lightly on thin stems in the breeze, or folded, en masse, before a gale. I could feel them around my face.
They haunted me at work, or driving around. They would emerge from nowhere, I would feel them rising up from my unconscious as though from a dark pool.
Lush. Emerald. Abundant.
Then, finally, on Wednesday it snowed. A glorious thick snow that clung to branches and power lines, closed schools, and rendered the world beautiful again. I climbed (how wonderful it would be if the past tense of climb were “clomb”!)—oh, what the hell, I clomb up among snowy branches through falling snow.
The leaves receded a bit.
And this Friday night it’s well below zero with a biting wind—true winter temperatures at last. A climb without a hat is a race against pain. To be honest I yearn for carefree summer, but better -11 than 32. At least you know you’re alive.
As for the leaves, they have vanished.
They’ll return when they’re needed.
In the meantime, I’m heading in another direction, climate-wise and leaf-wise. With any luck I’ll see a beautiful tree or two in India betwixt the wedding festivities; and maybe I’ll be able to send a picture this way.
