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