Shouldn't…but Do

Sunny days and crisp nights have conspired to create a symphony of foliage in my neck of the woods.

Hues of gold, red, sienna, purple.  Fantastic licks of green, burgundy, black, orange.  Autumnal riot.

The dimming sun coaxes deep colour forward like no other time of the year. Degradation of green chloroplasts defines summer’s demise, allowing  pigments –  carotenoids, xanthophylls, anthocyanin – to blush brightly, transforming a ubiquitous robe of shimmering greens into a patchwork cloak.

Individuals stand forth in the autumn of life, from the great crowd of green.  No more one of the same, but distinct, with colour that highlights, speaks the story of  life lived from those roots.

The forest tells the  tale  – the gift of the genotype, played out in the unique expression of the phenotype.  Where that seed landed, was the soil rich for its personality? Was it lean?  Did the sapling grow straight?  Was it shaded, crowded, or attacked by disease in a way that shaped its form otherwise?

Did lightening destroy the canopy that protected it?  Did fire sweep through and create altogether different conditions?  Did it get enough water, nutrient, at critical moments, or did it make do?

And once grown, each year brought different challenges, different grace, until it is, as they say, what it is.

True colours show with age.   Deepening, flickering,  from year to year, from breath to breath.

Their stories – the beauty, the ugliness – exhilarate me.  Were I to stand among them, quiet, I could disappear.