Central Massachusetts
The last of the fall leaves drift to the ground. The now naked trees show their age in gray branches covered in scabby lichen. How long the trees have stood here, I do not know. Long enough to decline. Long enough to nearly die. With roots laced deeply in the rocky earth, still they hold fast. Branches reaching for the sun and sky. Today, moody clouds drift above – beyond their reach.
I’ve always loved trees. Many of my childhood memories include one – one I climbed, sat in to read, or paced beneath with the toil of my thoughts. In the shadow of their beloved branches, I put down roots of my own.
I’ve wanted to be a tree. Like the Ents in Lord of the Rings — old, wise, firmly rooted against the elements. In the summer, face to the sun. In the winter, defiant to the cold. Unmoving.
But today, I want to cut them all down. Their roots make me claustrophobic. How can they stand in the same spot all their days – ever looking up, ever reaching out, feet in the unforgiving concrete of place?
Today, I’d be a cloud. Untethered. Moving with the breeze. Ethereal.
Perhaps it’s winter’s impending gloom. The gathering in and staying put that leaves me as restless as the fleeting clouds. Or maybe, this wildness is good. A sign of life still pulsing through buried roots.
If you grow the same thing in the same ground for too many seasons, you deplete the soil. Perhaps people are no different. We are meant to be rooted, yes. But we’re made for growth and change too. We aren’t trees after all – meant to stand in the same soil all our days.
The trees in my backyard are dead and dying. Suffocated by invasive vines. Eaten up by caterpillars. Marked by weather and storms. Once smooth skin now bears the wrinkles of moss and decay. I can ignore their condition when hidden by leaves. But autumn reveals their plight. Their bony branches reach like skeletal fingers to the sky. I follow their line to the blue beyond – all sunshine and wisps of feathery cloud; and I ache to leave their death and rootedness behind.