Grief Assuaged by Nature

 

In August, my dad died.  I spent a few hours processing the news, but all I felt was an emotional maelstrom and a physical need to go outside and DO something.

So I harvested saskatoon berries. 

Berry picking has always been a calming and meditative activity for me.  It engenders feelings of gratitude at the reliable plenty of a summer’s harvest.  

 Today though, my mind was whirling with images of my dad and my siblings as I plucked the fruit.  In the process, the berries soothed my knot of grief.

I remembered when I planted these six, spindly little seedlings a decade ago. Every year, I worried when the springy boughs bowed below the snow, wondering how they would fare the following spring.  Some branches broke.  Of those, I taped and splinted a few.  Some benefited.  Others didn’t.  I pruned low branches girdled beneath our deep snow by hungry voles.  I mulched in the fall and fertilized in the spring.

Of the six trees, two are tall and prolific producers.  Three are middling, and one is the runt of the group.  

Since each tree has grown differently, I have lots of “woulda, coulda, shoulda thoughts” about my interventions. What if I had planted them elsewhere and farther apart?  Some trees hog the sun, grow taller and stronger and their boughs whip the narrower branches of an adjacent tree, which becomes stunted.  What if I had pruned them better, earlier?  Now such intervention on some major limbs might kill the tree.  What if I had watered them deeper?  What if?

All of us who are children, as well as parents, co-parents, step-parents, and siblings contemplate such what ifs.  It is hard to step out of a family or community and view it from outside.

As I gathered the berries, I reached for those of the darkest blue hue, heavy and round with juice.  Since the berries do not all ripen at the same time, I leave those that are purple or red that need additional time to mature more slowly in the sun. 

Some berries grow in ideal locations – plenty of sun, protected from the wind, with room to grow, well separated from others. 

Some are physically deformed by birds that pecked part of them.  A few look fine, but skinny larvae burrowed inside and rot the interior.  In thick clusters, a single berry in the middle is always desiccated and surrounded by a gray fluff of mold, which taints the berries surrounding it. It did not have room to grow so it died and infected those surrounding it.

Each tree, each berry, each season, teaches me a different lesson.      

That day, different from a decade of other harvesting days, my mind viewed this line of trees as a community, each tree as a family, and the berries as individual members of that family tree.

My dad has died.  The saskatoons consoled me because I observed among those trees and branches, life experiences that illuminate my own.  

 I can’t hug my dad.  But I can stroke these branches and think about his children and grandchildren and great grandchildren who will grow toward the sun, strong and resilient.  He was a strong tree with, like all of us, some weak branches.  He has many progeny, who will blow and bend with the winds of the future.

We have a bench along the lake shore with three stone cairns as memorials.  When I retrieve his ashes, we will build a fourth. 

       

Lessons from the Brevity of Autumn

 

Some people find autumn and winter depressing and prefer spring and summer. 

I am not among that group.  To me, the brevity of a gorgeous, Alaskan fall is a very visible message to appreciate each day, each morning, each rapidly changing view.  Part of the reason is psychological: Because THIS WILL NOT LAST, so enjoy it.  Part of the reason is practical: the changes of fall and winter contribute to the fecundity of spring and summer.

Sometimes, we need to be hit on the head with important reminders like this.  Autumn does both.  It feels transient but it is benefits are long lasting.  

Sadly, I have two friends whose cancers have metastasized.  Both are using phrases like, “I will never see X or Y again.”  I think of them as I watch the leaves drop to the ground.  Is this their last autumn? Some of us know when death is right around the corner, but others are caught off guard.   We are lucky who enjoy a springtime youth, a summer’s middle age, and transitions to autumnal and then winter’s old age.  Not everyone does.  Fall drives that message home.  

So I luxuriate in the beauties of the season.   I stare in awe of electric yellow birch and larch trees (the latter is the only conifer that sheds its needles), framed by purple mountains.    I inhale the earthy aroma of high bush cranberries and the tannic scents of crispy leaves as my boots shuffle through the accumulating piles of red, orange, yellow, and brown that  flutter gracefully to the ground.    I harvest rose hips and berries and potatoes and horseradish root.

Besides the beauty, this annual blanket of fall leaves is as important to the ecosystem as elders are important to younger members of society.  The skirts below trees and bushes blanket them from cold and add biomass to the soil.  The leaves deter weeds.  From the trails that do not need the leaves, I rake piles to strew over my vegetable and flower gardens as mulch.  Over the winter, the leaves break down under the snow weight to lighten the soil the following year.   Voles and insects burrow beneath the leaves for protection from winter weather.  With so many benefits of autumn leaves, I don’t know why anyone rakes them into a garbage bag to be carted off.  They are valuable to every plant and critter in your yard.

Looking upward from the lake shore, I see termination dust (initial snow) coating the cap of the 4600 foot mountain west of our lake and draping the 5000 foot mountain range to our north.  Each 1000 feet of elevation is about 5 degrees cooler than below.  So after each rain or fog here, we watch the snowline creep downhill until it envelops us, too.  The natural world is our thermometer and barometer.  Mine is beautiful.

October 10 we awoke in the dark to the sound of hundreds of geese, swans and cranes vectoring south.  In the early morning light, we saw a flock of a hundred or more geese resting on our lake.  They huddled so close to one another that they looked like a bright white island. I don’t think my dog, who gets very excited about individual water fowl, could even interpret what that mass was.  The timing of their flight south was clear when the light lifted and we saw the first dusting of snow in our yard as well as deeper incursions on the mountain tops.  These huge migratory departures in fall and  arrivals in spring punctuate our year more decisively than any calendar date.

In this short and dramatic season, I know that some morning later this month, we will awaken to a black and white world.  Technicolor autumn will disappear for a year.  For others, this is their last season.  So, for me and for them, I savor every image of these last few days of evanescent beauty.