On Dead and Dying Leaves

There is s small hiking trail in the middle of town where I live and I frequent it often with my camera. There is, being a hiking trail, always a carpet of dead and dying leaves everywhere along the trail and in the wetland ponds.

I feel a kinship with these leaves. They are all different, yet all the same. All alive for a season, then they change, they fall, they dry out, curl up and crumble. They are all different colors, different sizes and different shapes. Some are hardier than others and are able to hang on to their branches in a stubborn death grip. Some hold their color on the forest floor until they are eaten by their fellow forest creatures and become a ragged version of their former selves.

I love every one of them. Even the ones that are almost dust, with only delicate skeletal remains left behind. There is dignity in death in the forest. Nobody blames a leaf for a life wasted. Nobody criticizes the last leaf on the tree for refusing to give up because they are doomed to decay anyway. Nobody shuns a leaf because it is riddled with holes from being eaten by something. They are all there to serve. First with life-giving oxygen, then to feed other creatures, and finally to die and enrich the earth, providing nutrients to the tree that gave them life. There are no politics, no prejudice, no judgement.









I like to be among these small little miracles. I like to enjoy them in their youth, their prime and finally in their death. They welcome me without comment no matter my mood, no matter the weather, no matter whether I notice them or not. They are perfect just as they are.

For more of my leaf portraits, please visit my collection here:
https://mary-bedy.pixels.com/collections/leaves+and+plants

Comments

  1. M.M. AndersonJuly 26, 2020 at 3:15 PM

    I enjoyed reading about your connection with the forest. It shows in your work.

    ReplyDelete

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