My breath caught in my throat when I looked outside one morning earlier this week. The walnut and ash trees east of our neighbor’s house were naked, their limbs stripped of leaves. This fall has been a wet one, and the bare limbs reminded me of how little time there was to spend outside and enjoy fall.
Did fall sneak by, I wondered as I began my walk, because I’ve been too busy, because I didn’t make time to rest and be still? Whatever the reason, the stark tree trunks and bony limbs, reaching with clawlike fingers to scratch the sky, made me ache for shady, green leaves and summer days.
When I reached the end of the driveway, I turned east, in the direction of the dull brown stand of trees. I wanted to shut my eyes and ignore these harbingers of winter. But I couldn’t because a glow of shocking pink and cobalt blue sunrise poured through the tree trunks. It filled in the nooks and crannies where the leaves used to live. It rested on the fingertips of the trees and shimmered on the horizon, a mass of stripes, a riot of color, a sudden wave of beauty.
And then it was gone. The trees were brown and bare again, the limbs stark and bony once more. But I was changed, because I had seen what summer and fall had hidden from me during their long and riotous reigns:
There is beauty beyond the obvious and easy.
There is beauty in spareness.
There will be beauty this winter.
But I have to look up to find it.
