Thoughts About the Death of a Tree

I spent the weekend not knowing what I was going to write for this blog assignment, when a thought hit me as I was coming home from watching a movie with my family this evening. As we were winding through my neighborhood in an obnoxiously long way due to the construction on 101, I saw all the trees in their autumn coats. Some were just a dull shade of brown or perhaps red wine, but most were fireworks of color! There are some that are half changed into a brilliant shade of scarlet and the other half is still the bright shade of green it's been since last May, and others entirely yellow and orange in the most incredible hues. Even while I enjoyed this display of colors, it occurred to me: the only reason these leaves are this way is because they are dying; the lack of sunlight declines the photosynthesis, and they stop making the green chlorophyll, or something along those lines as I understand it.

At this thought, I recalled a poem that I still have memorized from seventh grade:

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

Dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Nothing Gold Can Stay; Robert Frost.

This makes me think of how we should grasp what we have while we have it. We don't fully realize an appreciation for anything until it's gone, or in the case of the trees, until it's dying.

Have a happy week!