The Beauty I Have Missed

by Brenda Wilson
(Colorado Springs, Colorado)

How does nature affect me? Let me try to explain that to you in this wonderous little piece I wrote of the ever elusive changes of the seasons. I hope you all enjoy.

I recall waiting and watching for the barren trees of winter to finally put forth the first green buds of the spring. As the weather got warmer, I kept my vigil, waiting and watching, watching and waiting. I remember seeing those first buds of the season emerge from the stiff, twig like branches of the trees, to be gently covered in the softest of green color. I kept my daily watch and I waited to capture the miracle of those tiny buds being transformed into bright, bold leaves… and then… one day… in a moment in which I must have blinked, those tiny beauties miraculously burst forth in all the magnificence and glory of the spring season. Somehow I’d missed this miracle. It was as if I’d been in some deep slumber or blinked too slowly and the world set in motion something that was faster than I could capture. I watched in awe as over night the trees were transformed from leafless gray creatures, reaching their limbs toward the sky so the sun could warm their branches, to great beings of fresh green color, full of life and moving in the breeze like some marvelous giant dancing in the wind.

I promised myself that I would not miss the next change. The one from the summer to the autumn season. That whatever had transpired in the course of Mother Nature’s timetable that had prevented me from seeing the transformation of summer’s miracle would somehow not happen again in the fall of the year. I would watch more carefully. I would trick the forces of nature and time so that I would not miss the next miracle of the seasons.

Alas…A great slumber must have befallen me, for I sit and watch from my window as one after another, the leaves drift from their perches amongst the branches and slowly float in their bold, beautiful oranges and yellows to the ground. Like vibrant jewels in our midst they gather in mounds on the ground and blow about at our feet in the wind. I know I was here, I thought I was aware, but Mother Nature tricked me once again. I saw her visiting with Jack Frost one day and I suppose that should have been my clue that another great and marvelous event was about to take place. I must have turned away for a moment or so, and in that time Jack came and painted all the trees in beautiful color.

I know I’m slowing as time goes by, but I promise myself not to miss the miracle of the winter season. I watch as the beautiful color of the trees gently float to the ground. The days become shorter and the nights wear on endlessly as the weather becomes colder. Everything everywhere seems so lifeless.

The branches of the trees are transformed once more to great, gray barren arms, reaching toward the sky, empty and sorrowful like a mother who has just lost her child. They sway in the wind and the creaking they make sounds like desperate cries of sadness and moans of desire for something to fill them one more time.

I awakened one cold morning in the early part of the winter season, to a beautiful white softness covering everything. The trees all wrapped in a fluffy blanket of snow, as if Mother Nature has reached out and provided comfort for those sorrowful, barren arms. The air is fresh, and filled with a crispness that tingles my nose. In the stillness of the day the snow glistens in the sunlight like millions of diamonds strewn about.

It seems that in the hustle and bustle of my busy life I have once more missed the transformation of the season that has taken place. Year after year the seasons come and go and it seems I have missed them all. In the stillness of a single moment great changes take place that I will never have the opportunity to witness again. As I grow older I vow to slow down enough to catch all that this life has to offer, to witness the transformations of time and space, of life and death. The always moving and ever changing miracles of life.