Monday, November 20, 2023

Signs of life in the almost-fallen leaves

Obvious signs of a hard-lived life
London, ON
November 2023
This photo originally shared on Instagram


Deep in the woods in a valley carved by the river, one maple tree among thousands stubbornly clings to the last of its leaves.

It’s rather obvious these particular leaves are holding on for dear life, survivors really, and they wear every last scar of a brutal spring, summer and fall. Between drought, pests, heat, smoke, and everything else Mother Nature could throw their way, they’ve endured and still managed to come out the other side.

So this isn’t a typical autumn scene. No perfection here, no picture-perfect blaze of red or orange. Leaves like this don’t make it to postcards. Or textbooks. Or frames or walls or mantels.

I could probably walk a little further and find one of those picture-perfect trees with its picture-perfect leaves. Some of them - and, I guess, us - wear life differently than others. But I have no interest in doing so, because the imperfection on display here is precisely the point - and I’ve never really subscribed to arbitrary definitions of perfection and imperfection, as if others can or should dictate what we feel.

I’ve said this so many times before, yet it bears repeating: beauty comes in many forms, particularly when it tells the story of how something got to this point in time in the first place.

After all, wouldn’t we rather know the stories behind the things we see? Wouldn’t we rather lean into the scars and the torn and shredded and faded spots and listen for the echoes of how they came to be?

Perfection, whatever that may be, is overrated, anyway.

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Related:
Dirty old leaf, October 2020
When life ends, September 2020

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