We develop and follow routines—get up in the morning, yoga, journal, shower, breakfast, go to work— because they are reassuring and, on a certain level, we get things done on automatic pilot so we can dwell on the more riveting aspects of our lives in the foreground of our minds.
We've lived here on the river for sixteen years now, the longest we've dwelled in any single place since my husband and I started cohabitating more than three decades ago.
We cut a path that meanders through our woods and along the river the first summer we lived here. Goldie and I walk it nearly every day. Our pattern.
I've gained a deep appreciation for the intricacies of Lady Nature during our daily visits together, of how the water flows at different times of the year (cold water appears to move in a flatter, oily pattern than warm), of the spot where the yellow dogtooth violets appear every year, that the large sycamore leaves will be among the first to float to the forest floor.
The pattern you see in this leaf reveals the minute veins that carry water during the spring and summer. At this point in the season, when the tree no longer needs its leaves because the coming months are darker, a cork-like barrier develops between the branches of the tree and the stems of its leaves. Bereft of water and nutrients, the chlorophyll begins to die and the yellow or orange or red that's been in the leaf all along reveals itself.
If you catch the process at the right moment, you get to marvel at how similar the veins of a leaf are to the veins in our own bodies.
We are not so different from our vegetative neighbors. We're merely members of different tribes.
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