lone leaf

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Cold. Cold. Wet and rainy. Dreary. Midnight deary. While I pondered weak and weary. The last of the autumn leaves are still clinging to the trees as the first taste of winter has come gently rapping at my chamber door.

And I’m not ready to let go of fall, but when am I ever? Breakin' up is hard to do, but you have to let go of one to welcome the joys of another. You move on, that is life on planet Earth. You simply move on, even when it hurts.

One of the most emotive parts of Stephen Altschuler’s book, Sacred Paths and Muddy Places, comes late.

“Millions of leaves had been falling, but never had I isolated in my awareness any one leaf’s leaving the twig to which it had clung. The importance of this sighting had to do with missing another of nature’s most significant events: the moment of the death of a leaf,” he writes.

“So the watching began, and it lasted a long time, focusing intently on one particular leaf, not knowing how long the release would take. An hour went by, then a second hour—a trance-like hour concentrating on that leaf. At times the distinction between leaf and self blurred. Scary stuff, losing boundaries, but the seeing provided the anchor to reality.”

“Finally, without fanfare, the leaf fell, swirling to the ground. I rose slowly, never losing sight of it, and picked it up: a maple leaf, crinkled and brown, drained of life, dead, but somehow a part of the part of me that sees—the part that understands what it sees not in words but in feelings. That part remained alive regardless of circumstance, for in nature, its death would lead to life.”

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