Scarlet leaves bleed their colorful carriage onto my neck and shoulders as I seek shelter and a place to hide beneath their brilliant canopy. Summer is better for disappearing, when so many dark green leaves work to camouflage the shy and timid. Fall strips the trees and bushes of their privacy screens, but this Japanese maple is still providing a bit of safety for those of us not quite ready to bare it all.
This is the season where one begins seriously contemplating hibernation, and wondering if the bears know wisdom that isn’t accessible to foolish humans such as myself. Would it be so awful to sleep the winter away, emerging in the spring just as the earth is waking again too?
The red leaves of this Japanese maple surround me like a scarlet cloak. Fall finds a way of protecting those who require it, working in strange and unexpected ways to see us through the winter to come. Whether it’s a trick of the mind, an altered state of perception, or an actual shift in reality, fall provides a cozy blanket, a spiritual balm, for all that is about to come.
Beneath the blood red leaves of a maple tree…
