“You know me, I think there ought to be a big old tree right there. And let’s give him a friend. Everybody needs a friend.”
― Bob Ross
Only a tree, with roots and branches crawling, reaching, changing. I can’t help but notice those around me. Rustling and swaying above, the anxious rumpus of yellow beckons in drying and falling leaves, betraying the dying of a month. Four weeks ago the same trees bustled with the soft murmur of green; chanting the rhythmic sound portrayed in the moniker of ‘quaking’ aspen, however, then they carried lifeblood within them, holding tightly but soft. Then, the sound in their leaves told me I could nap without a jacket, feeling the warm breath of wind mixed by the sun on my skin. But during this month a change is felt and these trees begin to flee in preparation for dormancy, hiding their energy away from the leaves, storing it in their ancestral roots. Allowing what was theirs to fall, giving them back to mother earth. In this moment standing amongst them, they sing the sound of September 28th, drying branches on winds that beg a coat to be buttoned and a hat to be pulled down over chilly ears. Buried in this cadence, ominous murmurs in their voice carry the not so distant music of November; a time of migration, when it’s too late had you not paid attention to the apex of the plot now being read aloud by September. Now, that sound is yellow but bleeding…
