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I'm no longer waiting for the immersion in Nature that part of me so desires. I'm no longer filled with envy for the experiences that others relate. I finally am admitting that I live in a city and will never build a cabin in the woods.
This week I saw a leaf fall. You'd think I might have seen this in the past. It's true that falling leaves in October are not a surprise to me, but this week I saw a leaf fall.
I was sitting in the upstairs front room, looking at the same neighbourhood scene that has been the view from that window for 44 years. The maple tree--whose leaves emerge red in the spring, turn green for summer celebration, and scatter gold on the ground in October--is half-undressed right now. It was a blue-sky day, mild with only occasional gusts of wind. As I looked at the familiar and empty scene, a yellow leaf floated by on its way to the pavement. Its trajectory was more varied and more animated even than the twirling fall of a maple key. This leaf inscribed long arcs against the blue, swooping to the right, back to the left, to the right—all the while descending, an elegant dancer
following her entrancing choreography.
And just as the yellow leaf touched the earth, another caught my eye, pirouetting its way from up to down. Then a gust of wind gave me a dozen leaves at once, not butterflying but racketing in a wind-driven decline. Then peace again. Nothing. Blank scene. And then a single leaf fell.
Inspired as I was by this leaf waltz, I was prepared to watch the entire deleafing of the tree, no matter how many days it might take. That part of my brain, however, was overridden by the part that must always get thing done, and before I knew it I was downstairs doing some mundane but necessary task—leaves forgotten.
But the leaf incident has legs. It won't leave my mind. The woods-envy that usually colours my life is disappearing (not gone yet, but diminishing). All I need to do is see what's here—take it in fully and gratefully—and my reward is immediate.
This isn't the first time I've had such a lesson. Our lives are spirals, after all, and we meet the same issues over and over, on different levels. But this time I made a deeper connection with the reality of the experience. Now I know the essential nature of sitting at that window to see what might occur.
In fact, it is that same window that has afforded me the awareness of water drops clinging to the telephone wire like the beads of a necklace. And, in the summer, the sight of an army of ants, in single file, marching in both directions along that wire. Just open the eyes. Open the eyes.
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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