Nothing Gold Can Stay

It's the last day of September, and I've climbed a tree in Discovery Park.

I didn't come out here to climb the tree. I had a much more mature reason for entering the park at first; I was pursuing the entirely sane goal of running in a great big circle around it. Running and I have a long and tumultuous history--full of harsh words and ecstatic moments, disappointment and fondness--and today is no different. I left grudgingly, in annoyed anticipation of going out for dessert later, slamming the door behind me and jogging without passion up the drab sidewalk behind my apartment.

The circle I ran is actually a serpentine loop through forests and meadows, flirting briefly with the sea but mostly lounging in dim forest. I grew up running around a lake of the exact size as this giant park loop, but I've found that running through a forest is harder and more solemn than circumventing a lake. The paved path around the lake is packed with people, anyway, on every nice day in Seattle, while this root-strewn gravel trail is deserted at 5:00 PM on a weekday. Just right for a contemplative and half-hearted run at the end of a long day.

Every so often, a curve of sweetly crunching leaf-strewn path will remind me of cross country races, back in that brief moment that I thought I loved running. It was the leaves I loved, of course. I adored the hours I spent in the forest in autumn, drinking in the dual pleasures of fire-leafed woods and the cheers of my best friends around me. It doesn't surprise me that I have never recovered, in a sense, that first love for running. Take away the exhilaration of competition, the bus that took me out to those nice parks, and the teammates to encourage, and running becomes, for me, just pounding my feet down a path, running from the devils of diabetes and heart disease. Yet here, on the lonely Discovery Park trail, I thought I could recall some of that long-ago affection.

Other than these flashes of cross country, it is mostly the present that occupies my mind today. Even the teenaged running memories bring me back to the present, for the loneliness of running a race is the loneliness of teaching and perhaps everything else. Though I ran with others, there were often long stretches when, like now, I could see no one. I was aware of their presence around me, on the other side of trees or bridges or hills, but I couldn't see. I was--I am--the only one who saw what I saw, who ran just now, right here. In that way, nothing has changed.

Three miles of running and I am almost back home, when the tree--a large madrona that splits into a peaceful two fingers near the ground--catches my attention. Without much consideration I climb up into the Y in the tree. It proves more comfortable than I expected.

I wonder for a while about the maple leaves I see above the madrona tree, then trace their origin to the stout tree beside me. I plot an escape route over to the stronger tree next door if a bear appears, by some dire catastrophe, in my park. I consider the consequences of being bitten by one of those nickel-sized spiders on the bushes a few feet down. Attention wanders and flits, eventually settling on the layers of green leaves between me and the pearl-white sky.

I have always loved the fall for its quiet majesty, so regular and lovely, so resigned and stoic in the face of endings and hibernations to come. Yet today, on one of the first days of autumn, I find myself mourning these green leaves. Even though they are faded and tired, and soon will be an honest blaze of color on the branch, I wish that they could stay. Today, just for a breath or so, autumn seems a deep sadness preceding a long sleep.

To love seasons, I know, is to love change itself, and to enter fully into the depth of each time. To love the barren winter with a passion beyond mere thankful certainty that spring will eventually return. How, I continue to wonder with my Rushdie-reading students, can I invest fully in the truth of each day, even ones that fall in grey and dormant seasons?

The leaves, which today fill the forest with delicate light, will fall soon, inescapably, fluttering to splendid ends. As I sit below them, I long to embrace change as they will, celebrating with loveliness the close of some times, preparing myself for others with grace and truth.