This is what happens when you don’t drop your leaves!

Cottonwood Branches

Last month, we had a big snowstorm here in the front range.  Nearly a foot of heavy, wet snow fell overnight downing trees all over the area.

Colorado is of course no stranger to snow, and the people and ecosystem are well adapted to the changing rhythms of the seasons.  (In other words, no snow day!) In most cases, this storm would have come and gone without much fanfare.

However the timing of this storm reminded us that the seasons of nature aren’t always quite as regular or orderly as we might suppose.  This time the snow came before the diminishing light and cooler temperatures had signaled the leaves to dry out. And before the winds that usually come whistling down the mountains in the fall had had a chance to blow the dried leaves to the ground.

And the impact of this awkward timing was evident all over, including in our backyard!

What was so striking to me was that this was a vivid example of something that I’d been thinking about since I heard Cairene MacDonald talking about transitions and the difference between what happens when we resist them, and when we don’t.

She reminded us that we’re nearly always in transition in one form or another, whether it’s transitioning from one activity or another or one phase of business to another.  And goodness knows as moms, we’re constantly witnessing our children transitioning from one stage to another.  Newborn to infant… infant to toddler… etc.  And our parenting has to constantly shift as well.  It takes a lot of conscious awareness to keep up with where our kids are instead of where they were two months or two minutes ago!

So riffing on this article, Cairene described the natural cycles of change using a deciduous tree as an example: birth, growth, maturity, turbulence, hibernation, and rebirth.

Turbulence is a natural part of the cycle of growth and is a signal that it’s time for a change.  When we look at the natural world, it is obvious that turbulence is a beneficial force- not a sign that something is wrong.

At one point Cairene said something that really struck me:

Nature doesn’t resist change.  Only humans do.

The tree doesn’t say, “But I don’t want to drop my leaves!  I’ve spent all summer getting them just right!”

When I heard that, a light bulb went on in my head.  I saw the whole picture in my head immediately: and said to the class, “Of course.. trees HAVE to drop their leaves or else when the snow comes, they will lose entire branches.”

Little did I know when I said that (way back in September!) that I would have such a real-life demonstration of this lesson!

When we look at the natural world it’s so easy to see the valuable role of turbulence in protecting the tree as a whole, and how much more vulnerable it would be if the winds didn’t regularly come.  We don’t think the tree is sick when its leaves start to change color and dry out, we recognize this as a normal part of the natural process.

But in our human lives, we often assume that turbulence (whether it’s with our children, our spouse, our community, our household routines, etc) is a sign that something is wrong.  When those first leaves start to fall (when we forget a bill, or something upsets us beyond what seems reasonable), we think it might be a signal that something very bad is (or might be) happening.

When we think something might be wrong, we tend to get scared, and when this happens, we humans seem to hold on even tighter to the status quo instead of recognizing turbulence as a signal to start dropping things.

Especially when it’s something we wanted, or something that’s been around so long we can’t quite imagine life without it, it can be very hard to imagine dropping these leaves!  Goodness knows I’ve certainly been reluctant to let go of things (and by things I mean things- clothes, furniture, books, etc… but also ideas, projects, plans, expectations and relationships.

But can you imagine a tree protesting, “It can’t be fall yet!  I’m not ready to lose my leaves!”? It’s really such a silly image!

Unlike trees, however, humans have a choice about how to deal with turbulence.  We can go with it, responding to the signal to start dropping things, or we can resist it, in which case chaos often results.

The tangle of broken tree limbs, power outages and blocked driveways was a vivid testimonial to the chaos that can result when the trees don’t have the chance to respond to the call to drop their leaves.

Finding the Fractal Flowers

Taking a step backwards, I find it especially interesting to note the fractal nature of nature- a tree that doesn’t drop its leaves risks its branches.  And a tree that doesn’t drop its branches risks being toppled completely.

Another fractal image is the larger cycles that encompass and reflect the smaller ones.

This ‘early’ snowstorm may seem out of time, out of step with the rhythms of the seasons, but perhaps there is a bigger cycle at work.  Just as the trees shed their leaves to make room for new growth in the spring, the loss of individual branches, or even whole trees is another version of letting some things drop away to make room for new growth.

And as if this weren’t enough to ponder for one day- this showed up in my morning newspaper:

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.

John Muir

What do you think?

Are you like me?   Do you tend to hold on even tighter to the status quo when things get rocky?  And have you ever experienced the broken branches that result from a refusal to drop your leaves? (I know I have!) 

Do you see other fractals here that I don’t?

Why is it so much easier to enjoy the building than the destroying phases of nature and our own lives?  

Please share in the comments!

P.S.  Cairene has just released her latest masterpiece: How to Get Out of the Quicksand of Overwhelm.  In case you don’t know her, let me just say that Cairene knows that we creative types are bound to get ourselves into sticky situations biting off more than we can chew.  With great humor and compassion, she helps them us gently extricate ourselves and create paths and early warning systems so that we don’t fall into the same hole more than once!

I have this ebook myself and can tell you there’s lots of great stuff in there. She helps you figure out which leaves to drop, and what comes next in a way that keeps you moving forward in a gentle but steady way.