Since last week’s cooling rains began, the aspen line has been perceptible on the peaks and slopes, its visibility increasing by the day.
What is not visible yet is any actual gold, although it’s already there. The reason we can see the lines now is that the leaves are already turning: drying, paling, at the moment appearing merely a lighter, brighter green than that of the conifers that surround them, but in truth, they look that way in part because there’s gold there already.
Down here at the mountains’ feet, our own aspens have begun turning, as well — a month and more too soon, at least by normal standards. But there is no “normal” any longer, and precious few “standards” left by which to measure it anyway.
And so we are left with the near-certainty of no real season of turning leaves, no fall filled with foliage on fire. It won’t be the first time; indeed, over the last half-decade, a little more, we’ve probably had more of these years than what was once an ordinary annual event. It’s one more loss among so many that we have lost count by now, but it’s a significant one.
I find myself looking to the trees a hundred times a day now, trying to catch each turn of leaf, each shift from green to gold, and beyond. It’s mostly unconscious, and I suppose the hope is to imprint them in memory, against a time, now looming, when the drought ensures that there are no trees to change color anymore.
It’s a sobering thought; a grief-inducing one, too.
There is so much still that can be done, that must be done, but so little commitment to do it.
For now, our one saving grace is to let what we still can see inspire us: to prevent its disappearance, yes, but more to the point, to shore up our spirits in the brutally hard but necessary work of saving what we can and rebuilding, as much as possible, what we can’t.
The subject of this week’s Monday Photo Meditation, above, reminds of us what to expect in the days and weeks to come . . . and of what we have lost. It’s a photo that Wings shot in digital format, but it dates back easily a decade, perhaps more. That much is clear simply by the spindly youth of the tree itself. It’s one of four that he planted more than two decades ago, in a gentle arc to the east: three side by side, the third and fourth separated by a pair of junipers. By the time he shot this photo, which, if pressed, I would put no later than 2012, perhaps as early as 2010, all of them still looked remarkably young and fragile, yet all were strongly-rooted and sturdy in their leafing and turning each year.
No longer.
This is, from left to right, the third of the three planted side by side; you can see the edge of one of the junipers in the lower right of the image. Beyond them stood the fourth, and of the four, that last is the healthiest of the lot now. The second is entirely dead; has been for four or five years now; the first is working strenuously no to follow suit, but the leaves on its branches are increasingly sparse from one year to the next. This one, the third of that trio, is much larger now than in the photo, and at a glance, might seem entirely healthy . . . but it, too, is losing leaf density from one year to the next, and those at the edges have been gold for a month and more already.
Wings shot the photo above later in the season than this; that much gold throughout its leaves would, back then, have occurred only well into October. And they were healthy leaves, with only the smallest number having dropped to a waiting earth. That was our usual pattern, up until recently: the last in the area to leaf in spring, but also the last to turn in fall, leaf colors spiraling in a slow dance that set free only a few of their number at a time, until a storm-driven wind would come along to shake more of them loose from their anchors.
Of course, back then, a first snow in October was also a given.
I can see this very tree outside the window now: taller, fuller, older, yes, but not stronger. It’s still more green than not, but that color is paling rapidly throughout, and distinct patches of gold have already appeared. Only a couple of leaves lie beneath it, but that will change before month’s end, especially given the unseasonal winds we have now.
It’s an early gilding of the earth, fall before “Fall,” the official kind, is even born . . . or at least acknowledged.
One challenge now is to appreciate its beauty, for it is still a gift; we know that too well from the recent years of record drought, when the leaves have burned on the limbs long before they could don their autumn robes.
The other is to let it inspire us, motivate us, animate our bodies and our spirits to the work.
Even when we work alone.
The aspens need us, after all.
~ Aji
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