Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Bright Colors in the Gray
A couple of days ago, I was out and about, enjoying the fall foliage.
In the rain.
With a hurricane threatening the surge up the Maine coast, the first hurricane warning Maine has had in something like 17 years. (The much touted Hurricane Kyle headed out to sea before it reached us -- the hurricane that never was, for us.)
Every year during the fall foliage season, I hope for at least one rainy day. Not a gusty day, with winds that pull the leaves from their branches, but a gray day to highlight the colors. To my mind, there is nothing quite as brilliant and stunning as those nearly iridescent reds, oranges, pinks, and golds against a gray backdrop. It seems as though those tiny leaves marshal their collective strength to pierce through the gloom and cast the shadows away. My spirit soars at the sight.
As I traveled around I spotted a little barn whose beauty struck me immediately. At the same time, it made me chuckle, for there was architecture imitating nature. Some of the barn's aged, blackened shingles had been replaced by newer bleached ones in a higglety-pigglety pattern reminiscent of the random splash of colors on the fall leaves. The bold, red trim mirrored some of the colors of the leaves in the field behind the barn. Red flowers in window boxes punctuated the shingles with further sparks of autumnal color.
I didn't have a camera with me, but I returned the next day to take a picture. The weather was improving by then, and the colors were no longer quite so piercingly brilliant. Nonetheless, I snapped the shutter... for what? To remind me of splashes of brilliant color against the gray, warmth in the cold, hope in times of despair.
Human beings can choose to cast the gloom away, too -- just as those beautiful leaves do on rainy days.
Poet Hannah Senesh once wrote, "There are stars whose radiance is visible on earth though they have long been extinct. there are people whose brilliance continues to light the world though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark. They light the way for [humankind]." (From Conscience and Courage, by Eva Fogelman.)
We live in troubled times. So be brilliant. Shine and shine and shine. Cast the shadows away.
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