The ground is the same: gray, sandy and uneven, with
sparkling flecks of mica that mirror the rocky path.
The smells are the same: damp earth and pine, clean air and
forest floor.
The sounds are the same: eternal quiet broken by bubbling
brooks that rush off in a hurry—time like an ever-rolling stream bearing my
life away …
Western North Carolina in the fall bears many similarities
to Western North Carolina in the summer.
Only the leaves and I are different.
In the summer of my twelfth year, the green leaves were
suffocating and dark. The shadows of trees hung over my head like my mother’s
anxious hovering. The piles of mountains hemmed me in, tying me to a summer
camp community and to a schedule that wore me out and bound my imagination. The
limitless possibilities of the plain, the blue Texas sky that raised earth to
heaven, the freedom of the lonesome cowboy—all that was blocked by the looming
emerald mountains that held me captive.
In the fall of my fifty-first year, however, the strong
trees seem frail, the truth of their skeletal branches exposed by falling
leaves. Their spidery complexity is as full of holes as the fragile world of
human relationships. The monolithic green barriers give way to diverse color,
to reds and yellows and browns that even the somber lake takes into itself with
bursts of welcome. The mountains no longer threaten my freedom. They hold me
close, heaped around me like the comforting folds of blankets on a bed, cupping
colorful community that might otherwise slip into heaps on the floor.
I want God to hold me tight as my greenness fades, and I
fall like the leaves. I no longer want the sky to be the limit.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment