Leaf Blowing

The first time I experienced Green Lake in Seattle was on a sunny, 80-degree Saturday in spring when I went picnicking at this popular lake, hemmed round by an urban trail. I remember the trail path well because it was here, strolling with my boyfriend in the shady water’s edge, that we joined the throngs of humanity circling around the lake. And it was here that we first held hands–feeling the strangeness and warmth of growing companionship and something beyond ourselves drawing us together in a new way.

“Do you feel like we’re one with humanity now?” I whispered, as we melded into the walkers and joggers, the bicyclists, the dogs on leash, youth on roller blades and scooters, and babies in strollers. We seemed united with the rest by the simple fact we were all walking the same road around this lake.

There were rules to obey to keep traffic flowing smoothly on this "two-lane highway" – walkers on the outside of the left lane and runners on the inside traveling clockwise while humans on wheels were going counter clockwise in the right lane. There was, and had to be, some sense of order, some rules, to make it a pleasant (and collision-free) experience for everyone.

Now five months later, in the damp days of fall, I find myself moved into a house right across from this same lake, staring out the window watching the people pass by.

One evening, under lengthening shadows, I joined them. Little scenes popped up before me. Hammocks hung between two trees, a family out on a blanket picnicking, a man on a bench playing an accordion, a dog chasing a squirrel up a tree, people going fast and people going slow, young people chatting and laughing, and an old man in a flannel shirt and plaid fedora on his head paused at the edge of the water, just listening, or waiting. He looked like the subject of a painting. I glanced back over my shoulder to watch the old man in the hat, just standing there as the world was rushing by around him.

At times I am like him, and I feel so small and so fragile, even antique, amidst the craziness of it all, longing to belong but feeling apart, yearning for what lays beyond the hard pebbles under my feet, yearning to see the leaf turn and shine gold. What makes it shine? Where does the leaf blow when it gets caught up in the wind and transported gently to…where? Perhaps the old man was waiting to get swept up like the leaves too, and like me, rest awhile while being carried on the wings of Providence. We are so fragile, rising and falling like the leaves, buds in spring and fading into grey, our hues shining lustrously one day and greying the next, only to return with vigor in new shades and shapes and sizes and show up in new places, times and seasons.

As this new chapter of my life unfolds in the bustling heart and soul of the city, I am thrilled at experiences yet to be lived out with eyes of wonder and an open heart. I am reminded that to be a writer requires practicing openness and receptivity at all times, but also of the Scripture warning, “Do not let your hand be open to receive, but clenched when it is time to give.” (Sirach 4:31) Yes, all these things require something of us.

“Greater things have yet to come, and greater things are still to be done in this city...” these lyrics by Chris Tomlin blared out of the car radio and caught me by surprise on my drive to my new home.

And so I write, for I’ve missed writing. I’ve missed the empty blank page lying open and exposed and ready and waiting to be filled with ink of my pen or the shape of the typed letter. I miss the creative flow and the rigorous act of writing that leaves you panting but exhilarated and feeling like you have achieved something beautiful or inspiring or at least just truthful. Inside my heart is a thousand flutters, a thousand birds that need to take flight, to let me rise with them from the earth to glory, to life in my soul, in my mind, radiating from my limbs, drawing others by its warm and gentle glow, being haven of growth for new things, and healing to all who come in contact with me, all who touch me, all things I touch…Body of Christ, “Amen.”

So I rake the scattered remnants of words, gathering them up into piles and heaps. Won’t you take my hand and revel too in this new season and all it brings?  Go ahead, jump in!

Pinch me! I’m in Washington!

I kept stopping on our path through the woods to marvel at the fact that I was no longer in the dry, colorful woods of Wisconsin with blades of grass and leaves crunching beneath my feet; but I was in Washington, in a wet and wild, misty forest with a bed of soft pine needles and dirt below me. The dark soil drew a contrast with the emerald green moss and ferns, growing up and out and over everything! Somehow I had gotten all the way out here and now I was in the place I had so often imagined, the place so many others, too, left homelands to discover - the Pacific Northwest.

There is something special about the area and the people of Seattle. I read in a book that the British expatriate writer Jonathan Raban mused, “Seattle is the only city in the world that people move to in order to get closer to nature” (Wild Seattle by Timothy Egan).

It’s not hard to see why, what with views of the Cascades or the Puget Sound and numerous forests to explore and wildlife, while the people and the city meld into it and love it and foster hobbies to enjoy it and stop their cars along the beach to watch the waves of the Puget Sound over their lunch break. I haven’t met anyone yet who takes this environment for granted. I pray I never do…for creation seems to want to be enjoyed.

Take for example, the tree trunks and rocks covered in shaggy, bright green moss so when you reach out and touch them, they feel like a dog’s curly hair under your fingertips! I named my favorite, an especially mossy one, “The Petting Tree.”

Here and there are splashes of bright color, in the face of a wildflower or in a multi-colored mushroom – such as this one, that grows out a rotting tree trunk.

“Old forests have a singular mystery, where young life embraces death and rot,” writes Timothy Egan in Wild Seattle. How is it that life can bud right out of death?

These splashes of color surprise me every time, and so much of the living and the dying are companions intertwined that you hardly know where one ends and the other begins. If you looked away and then glanced back, would the dead be coming to life?

This fallen tree, with its curved limbs sprawled out like the legs of a gigantic centipede…when the magician snaps his fingers, will the force of life return to it? Could it come lurching across my path?

 Or this tree, standing above the ground on its roots. What lovely fuel for the imagination! Is it the cozy home of a little leprechaun who sleeps under its roof? Or will it thrust its roots forward and start walking, tree and all? I can't help but think that these are the scenes books are made out of, like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

 

 Every forest feels enchanted. It is a stage for the circle of life and the drama of created things reaching for the sun. From high up in the tree trunk, this daring "Zacchaeus" fern waves its leaves to catch as much sunlight as it can, reminding me of the short-of-stature tax collector, who climbed a tree to see Jesus through the crowds.

Light! It always comes from beyond and all the plants are reaching towards it. It moves across the sky to shine through the mist and to reach all things as it goes its course, and to quench the desires of all that stretch out to absorb its warming rays.

The hikers whom we pass on the trail up the mountain greet us. They are friendly, asking us how we are doing, and it feels good to share the joy of being out here with fellow human beings.

I realized why the artist Thomas Kinkade’s paintings always seem so fictitious to me. My friend says there is nothing dead in his woods; all nature is alive, and the light emanates from all things rather than one source. Perhaps this was the way it was in Eden, nature pure and fruitful, or the way it was meant to be…but those paintings do not mirror the world that I inhabit. Let me rather be found in these woods I know, where, though nature is fallen, she shows that even the dead can rise again.