Seeking Shelter

A pale autumn sun sipped at the night’s last stars and while my back was turned, swallowed the moon’s sideways smile in one soundless gulp as I made my way back to the woods. On the other side of a marathon market weekend (three events in two days—a lot for us), I welcome the softer start to my morning and the chance to get reacquainted with something other than parchment-lined baking pans and the aroma of cinnamon. No matter how bone-tired I am, or how challenging the elements, I never regret the decision to walk the land.

It’s a color carnival out there this year and I’m not the only one who’s noticed. Each tree is vivid and unstoppable. Everyone’s talking about it at work, posting views from their front windows and driveway aprons on every social media site within hand’s reach, displaying an ombre of oranges and reds, deep rich mustards and translucent saffrons from the silver maple out back, edged in a crimson bleed. Somebody get Crayola on the phone—they might wanna update their deluxe box of sixty-fours, or at least dedicate a collection to the season.

I like how nature seems to have arranged for the trees to shed their leaves on some sort of rotation schedule—the sycamores first, all crispy brown caramel and milk chocolate, then silver and red maples taking their time dropping a leaf here, five there. The black walnuts shimmer their golden dresses down to the ground the minute a good breeze comes through, and I watch the kittens jump to catch them in the driveway, unable to resist all that twisting movement and sideways fluttering. And the sweet gums with their calicoed tunics, one tree sporting a deep beet-red collar at the top of its canopy while the rest of its leaves move from orange to yellow to pale celery. If rainbows were trees…(much gratitude to friends Deb and Mike for sharing about 50 young saplings from their place one day after Thanksgiving, getting them all tucked into our waiting landscape. The butternut squash soup and homemade bread we shared wasn’t nearly enough of a thank you).

What a shock it would be for the leaves to all drop at once without warning, no gradual easing into the cold exposed months of winter. This slow and measured transition feels kind and motherly and we receive it as gift for spirits already raw from the abruptness of life’s other harsh about-face moments. But I still stand beneath them all and wonder where summer went. Just six weeks ago, they gave us respite from a stronger and more determined sun as we plucked errant bindweed and thistles from the garden’s raised beds. Now their bare arms and fingers reach for a cooler sky about to go brittle in the span of another six weeks. Good thing I’m romantic about the views that surround me. I’ll try to remember that when I’m schlooping my way through the slush and ice on my way to the coop to see if the girls even want to leave their cozy pine shavings-fluffed bed and peck at the grain scattered in the morning’s snow.

Friends, life has been even heavier lately. In a staffing restructuring at work, I lost my admin and am working with my other teammate to take on the duties left behind, most of which we haven’t touched for four years. She took another position in the company, so we’ll still get to see her, thank goodness, but the gap in our team is a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that I haven’t been able to shake yet. I’ve taken to fretting again about how Patrick and I will age (it’s an episodic theme that surfaces this time of year as our bodies slow down and we walk reluctantly into the shrinking light of the next two months). The headlines continue to test the elasticity of one’s heart with the brutality of Russia’s war against Ukraine, cholera plaguing the good souls of flood-ravaged Nigeria and just last night, a crowd surge at a Halloween event in Seoul that left over 150 young adults trampled to their deaths. I know I should stop scrolling, and I do, but there are still too many unnecessary empty chairs at tables these days whether I’m reading about them or not.

So I suit up and head outside, walking sticks in hand and beg the trees for just another day of their comforting shelter, understanding that we’ll need to face the bare days of winter together, looking for grace and beauty wherever we can find it. When I wonder if I’m up to the task, Patrick greets me at the end of a workday with a pot of vegetable soup simmering and steaming up the kitchen windows. He smiles and pulls me in for a “how was your day” embrace and I reshape my definitions of shelter and protection, instantly and deeply aware of what I have, resolved not to take it for granted. It’s within my grasp and influence, this posture of humility and also my moral duty. I’ll keep asking “what else can I do?” and quiet my worried heart to hear the answer. Meanwhile, there’s a mulberry in the meadow, still shaking her green branches at us and I wonder what she knows that her ash and cottonwood neighbors don’t. She guards the creek as squirrels run up and down her trunk and across the grass at her feet, saying “not yet, not yet. When I’m ready.” Teachers are everywhere here.

So I’ll keep taking my tires bones out to the woods. I’ll remember the colors across the fields, throwing all my trust into a spring that so far keeps coming back to dress our trees in reassuring garments of hope and growth.

That’s what “what else?” looks like from here.