We watched that magnificent tree on the lakefront explode in green. A big, shaggy, looming presence fronting the beach. A silent witness to the doings of humans. A big wind would shake those leaves and they'd dance and sway.
By late August you could start to see the change. Green starting to turn. By late September early October, the tree blazed with a new energy, fiery orange, the leaves a bit more brittle and stiff.
The last few days, before the storm, the tree was all fiery glow. Blazing, blazing, blazing. Every leaf transformed. A green explosion turned into a bold multi-hued, burnt offering of color. After the storm, naked branches, a pile of leaves strewn on the ground; brittle, dead soldiers strewn across the beach, fluttering and chattering in the dirty street.
Today that tree stands tall and bare-branched. Dark. Looming. Gnarly. A naked old-timer. Daring you to blink. Defiantly jutting wildly into the dark sky. The sun doesn't rise til later, and now, the days are framed in long darknesses.
Yes, that tree has been a friend and companion to us for many years. We watched the circle of life from our favorite bench; the sprouting, the glowing, the fire, the loss, the long hibernation, and then, it all happens all over again. Never the same; a familiar trajectory: a bold, unfolding and folding. Life.
