Not-quite-so-plain green leaves

Life, translucent
London, ON
August 2021
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Every year, the forests and trees here in the Great White North turn all kinds of incredible colors, so I do whatever any good Canadian does and take a few photos to remember the experience.

With the color festival set to begin in earnest in a bit more than a month, there isn't a whole lot to see in the interim.

Or is there?

See, we've been conditioned to look for the bright, the spectacular, the shining stars. And while they are all indeed worth waiting for, we often ignore everything else while we're waiting for those celebrities of the forest - or celebrities, in general - to appear.

In doing so, I think we're missing out on quite a bit. Because there's intrigue in the everyday, beauty in the subtleties of life, compelling stories below a radar most of us can't be bothered to pay attention to.

So here's an ordinary shot of ordinary green leaves from a tree in our friends' back yard. It won't make the autumn-colors list, but that's not the point. Here and now, it's arresting in its own way. And in ignoring its beauty, we miss the opportunity to hear its story, and the stories of so many like it.

Indeed, the more I ponder these ordinary leaves, the more I realize this is another one of those lessons first discovered in the forest, but applicable in anything we do after we return from the woods.

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