Leaves

"… Can we relate to a leaf, on a tree, in a park, a simple leaf: green, glistening, sun-bathed or wet, or turning white because the storm is coming.  Like the savage, let us look at the leaf wet or shining with sun, or white with fear of the storm, or silvery in the fog, or listless in too great heat, or falling in autumn, dying, reborn each year anew. Learn from the leaf: simplicity. In spite of all we know about the leaf: its nerve structure phyllome cellular papilla parenchyma stomata venation. Keep a human relation — leaf, man, woman, child. In tenderness. No matter how immense the world, how elaborate, how contradictory, there is always man, woman, child, and the leaf. Humanity makes everything warm and simple. Humanity…

Anais Nin, Children of the Albatross

Ah, a  leaf — how complex and yet simple,wondrous and life-supporting.   For someone who loves trees as much as I do, I am naturally drawn irresistibly to the leaves which sprout each spring and endure all summer and into the fall and winter.  From a distance they form a dark green canope — deep, cool, inviting and mysterious.  Underneath a tall oak tree is cool shade.   If the branches are close enough, I like to peer closely at an individual leaf and marvel at its structure and design.   In summer’s heat and drought they have often seemed to wither and droop, weary of the struggle, yet reinvigorated the next morning, and when the rains come, they seem to sigh in relief, as I do, and as I did yesterday when for hours we had such beautiful, blessedly needed rain.   The green world I am surrounded by seemed transformed, if only in my imagination, yet I believe it is true — plants feel and have awareness.  They are living, just not in the sense that we are.

In Autumn in our decidedly less colorful landscapes here near the South Atlantic coast, we nevertheless have four very distinct seasons. I am thrilled when the swamp maples turn red and yellow and the ginkgo trees turn golden.  Most leaves turn brown, but I like to observe them on the forest floor amid fallen camellia blooms or, rarely, glazed in thin sheets of ice in one of the lakes in January at Magnolia Gardens.  At any time of year or season, I like to photograph trees backlit by sunlight.   The small part of the world I am in at that moment seems warm and illuminated.

In the depths of winter, most of the trees, except for our live oaks and water oaks, are bare, and it is only then that I can see the network of branches/veins that feed the leaves that come in spring.  There is hardly a finer sight than that of a bare tree outlined against a deep blue winter sky.   When winter gives way to spring, I know that the trees will be breathing again, exulting in life, giving us oxygen to breathe, another of their gifts to humanity and to all of life.

Sometimes I feel I am closer to the answer when I see a leaf slowly flutter to the ground in Autumn.   

A portfolio of leaves:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/camas/sets/72157630005161077/