This might be our last day of brilliant gold arrayed against a bright blue sky.
The forecast changed rapidly yesterday, calling seemingly out of nowhere for rain to arrive to tomorrow, thence turning to snow on Wednesday. Since then, it has altered again, now predicting that we are headed straight for snow late tomorrow. Even now, a wide band of gray clouds extends beyond the tops of the peaks, the first dawn cloud cover of any sort that we’ve had in days.
It was near seventy yesterday, and is expected to be so again today. If the projections are correct, the shock will be a rude one.
It’s time, of course — past time, indeed, for the mercury to fall even during the daylight hours. Normally, of course, we would have fiery foliage for a time yet, but this year’s deadly drought has upended the trees’ usual schedule. Leaves were yellow in early July, already falling by August; some trees never had a chance to turn their robes before a few strong winds stripped them bare.
For today, though, the aspens are still mostly full, and mostly brilliant: gold found nowhere else in nature, an electric shade that contrasts perfectly with the clear cornflower sky.
Seen from below, they resemble a ladder made of sun, one capable of carrying us to the dwelling-place of the spirits.
It’s one of Wings’s favorite perspectives when it comes to capturing the images of the trees. Fall, winter, spring, summer — season is irrelevant to his fascination with such angles, upward-bound. But this time of year, with Halloween two days off, and All Souls’ one day beyond, such vantage points show us another side of their identity, these soon-skeletal beings of bark and bone.
Children’s ghost stories have always been rife with images of haunted forests, of trees that come alive to stalk or save the small unwary traveler. Here, though, they seem to exhibit a different aspect, one spooky only in its association with the season.
They remind us that, stripped bare to the bone and sent to sleep, they yet survive. This is only one more stage in their constant process of becoming.
It’s a message of hope.
It seems, of course, entirely possible that the spirits orchestrated this world’s creation in such a way as to make that the whole point of autumn: a brief riot of color, a dance of pure electric joy, to strengthen our hearts and spirits sufficiently to survive the long dark winter to come. How mournful would half the year be if the trees traded green only for gray before shedding their robes entirely? In places such as this, spring is a long dull season, too, until its very end; without the fires of fall to warm our spirits, most of the year would be melancholy indeed.
Instead, we are granted the colors of fire, the shades of the light itself in these days when shades of other sorts are said to walk. The days are rapidly growing short now, and warm afternoons notwithstanding, winter whispers from just around the corner. The trees, like much of the rest of the world, are in the midst of their other process of becoming: transforming into temporary revenants, skeletal spirits whose bodies are reduced to bone, with precious little of substance left about them.
Wrapped in golden robes or bare, they still reach for the steady cornflower sky. And they remind us, too, to look up occasionally — to behold the blue, the clouds, the snow, the fire of the occasional sun dog.
Bones or no, the trees remain alive. The sky is alive, too, even — sometimes especially — in the depths of winter. And it will soon be time to do our part, time to sing the sun across the sky with a little extra fervor, a few extra prayers, so that the world and us with it may have another season in which to live.
Such gifts are more valuable than gold of more pedestrian sorts, more useful than any precious metal, any jewel or gem, no matter that the aspen leaves now look like a jingling cascade of doubloons.
At least for today, the spirits still grant us these leafy coins, seasonal currency paid as exchange for the cold and snow to come. And for today, we look up: through temporary gold to infinite blue.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
