[gentle music]
The Part That Stays Green. Episode Nine of
Galena House Audio, a Tuesday essay, from
Avery Lane Maxwell.
[river running]
A small note before we begin. This is a
personal podcast. I tell these stories as
I remember and understand them, from my
own life and perspective.
When other people wander into them, I
protect what belongs to them. These are my
words. My memories. And today, some
leaves.
All right. Come in. It is already warm.
[wind]
The leaves are louder than they look. I
forget that every year. From a distance,
aspens seem delicate. Very elegant. Gold
against blue sky.
The sort of thing somebody puts on the
front of a Colorado postcard with a
tasteful amount of saturation and sells
for seven dollars.
Up close, they are noisy. They tremble.
They knock against one another. They turn
their silver sides to the wind and back
again. The whole tree can look nervous
even when nothing is wrong. I like that
about them.
Today I went down to the water for a few
minutes. I brought my phone. Not because I
had something to say.
I think I may finally be learning that
those are sometimes the better
circumstances in which to say something.
The creek was moving. The trees were
yellow. Mostly.
And I crouched down near the bank because
I wanted the camera low enough to catch
the water and the aspens together.
There is a green leaf hanging very close
to the lens. It takes up more of the
picture than it has any right to. Behind
it, almost everything has already turned.
Gold. Yellow.
That pale almost-white aspens get when the
sunlight goes through them.
And right there in front of the camera:
green. Completely green. Late to the
meeting. Unconcerned.
I nearly moved it. Of course I did. It was
in the shot. And then I didn't. I am glad.
Because I think it may be my favorite
part.
[river running]
A few weeks ago I said the aspens had
started. Not the whole hillside. Just a
few trees deciding early. And now the
whole valley is doing it. That quickly.
There is something almost rude about how
fast fall happens in the mountains. You
spend all summer waiting for summer. Then
you become convinced summer will last
forever.
Then one morning somebody has changed the
lighting.
There is frost somewhere it was not
yesterday. You need a jacket when you
leave early.
The sun still looks warm through the
window, and then you step outside and
discover the sun has become decorative.
And every person in Colorado begins saying
exactly the same sentence: it went fast
this year. We say this every year.
Apparently nobody is keeping records.
But it did. It went fast. Summer always
does. Maybe everything does, once you have
learned how to love it.
That sounds sentimental. Unfortunately, I
think it is true.
[a low hum]
I have been trying not to make fall mean
too much. This is difficult for me. I can
make meaning out of almost anything. A
chair facing the wrong direction. A light
left on.
A receipt. A cup somebody did not finish.
Give me ten quiet minutes and decent
lighting and I can turn evidence of
absolutely nothing into a four-part
emotional thesis.
So I have been attempting restraint. The
trees are changing because it is fall.
That is allowed to be enough. They are not
performing a lesson.
They are not asking us to release what no
longer serves us.
They do not have Instagram accounts. No
aspen has ever looked at another aspen and
said, this season I am choosing myself.
Thank God. They are trees. It got cold.
Something in them knew what to do.
I find that comforting. Something in them
knew what to do. Not dramatically. Not all
at once. One branch. Then another. One
tree early. One tree late.
One leaf somehow still bright green while
everything behind it has already become
October.
That feels much more useful to me than
letting go. Because I am not particularly
good at letting go. I do not even like
throwing away boxes.
A very nice box can derail an entire
afternoon. You never know. It could become
important. It has corners. It closes
properly. This is how hoarding begins.
But change? Change I understand. I have
spent enough time trying to prevent it to
become something of an expert.
And what I keep learning is that change is
rarely kind enough to wait until the
previous version of your life has been
properly archived. It starts while
everything else is still happening.
You are still answering emails. Still
washing dishes. Still buying groceries.
Still asking somebody what they want for
dinner. And meanwhile some part of the
landscape has turned gold.
You do not always notice immediately. That
may be the strangest part. There are
changes in your own life that everyone
else can see before you do.
You are the last green leaf in the
photograph. Still insisting it is August.
[fire crackling softly]
I do not mean this sadly. I think I used
to. I used to think noticing change meant
preparing for loss. If something was
beautiful, I immediately became aware that
it could end.
Sometimes while the beautiful thing was
still happening.
Which is a fairly effective way to miss a
beautiful thing.
You can sit inside a perfect afternoon and
already begin grieving five o'clock. You
can be with someone you love and wonder
when they are leaving.
You can arrive somewhere and immediately
imagine the day you will have to pack.
You can ruin a perfectly good September by
thinking about February. I have done all
of these. Repeatedly. With commitment.
But today, sitting beside the water, I did
not feel that. I noticed the yellow. I
noticed the green. I noticed the creek. I
noticed the sun hitting the water in
little broken pieces.
And I did not ask any of it to last.
That felt new. Not profound. Just new.
There is a difference. Profound gets
framed. New gets practiced.
[river running]
The water was cold. I could tell without
touching it. Mountain water has a look
when the year begins turning. Summer water
invites you in. September water looks like
it has other plans.
It kept moving past the rocks. Around
them, mostly. Over some. There is probably
an entire philosophy in that sentence and
I am refusing to give it to you. You're
welcome. I just watched.
A few leaves had already fallen onto the
bank. Not many. Most of the trees are
still holding them. That is another thing
I had forgotten. The beautiful part
happens before the empty part.
We talk about fall as though it is the
season of things dying. But for a little
while it is the opposite. For a little
while everything becomes impossible not to
see.
A green hillside can disappear into
itself. Gold cannot. Gold announces.
Gold catches every little piece of light
available and throws it back. The tree
becomes more visible immediately before it
becomes bare.
I don't know what to do with that yet. So
I am leaving it alone. That is another
thing I am practicing. Not every
observation requires immediate emotional
development.
Some things can sit on the counter
overnight.
[fire crackling softly]
I came back inside afterward. The warmth
felt different because I had been cold. I
love that. There are things you cannot
feel until you have briefly been without
them.
Warm hands. A quiet room after a loud one.
Someone expecting you. A lamp already on
when evening comes.
Soup, probably. I have become old enough
to be emotionally affected by soup. This
was not in the brochure.
The light has changed inside too. That
happens before I notice anything else.
Summer light enters a room with
confidence. It takes whatever windows are
available. Fall light is lower. It
stretches.
It reaches farther into the room but
somehow asks less of it. Late afternoon
starts looking like evening long before
evening has technically arrived. And
suddenly you begin turning lamps on again.
I love lamps. This is not important to the
essay. I just think overhead lighting has
done enough damage.
There is a particular hour this time of
year when the windows are still bright but
the room has started glowing back. Outside
is gold. Inside is amber.
And for a few minutes the glass holds
both.
You can see the trees and your own
reflection. Neither one clearly. I think I
like the world best at that hour. Nothing
has fully decided what it is yet.
Day, but almost evening. Warm, but cold if
you open the door. September, but October
has started standing on the porch. Green.
Gold. Both.
[a low hum]
We ask ourselves for such clean
transitions. I am done with that. Now I am
this. I used to love that. Now I don't. I
lived there. Now I live here.
I was one person. Now I have become
another.
As though a life changes like somebody
flipping a sign on a hotel door. Vacant.
Occupied. Clean. Dirty. Please come back
later. It would certainly make
administration easier.
But I don't think people work that way. I
think we are more like the trees behind me
today. Halfway. Several colors at once. A
little ahead in one place. Still
completely green somewhere else.
And maybe we would be gentler with
ourselves if we stopped calling that
inconsistency. Maybe it is simply
September.
There are people I have known in one
season who would barely recognize me in
another.
There are people I knew years ago who
still carry a version of me that no longer
lives anywhere. I probably do the same to
them.
Memory is not especially interested in
updates. It keeps people where the light
was good. That person at twenty-two. That
person laughing in that kitchen. That
person in a car.
That person standing beside you before
either of you knew what the afternoon
would become.
We keep photographs this way too. A
photograph is almost offensively
confident. Here, it says. This is what
happened. And technically, yes. But a
photograph cannot tell you what happened
five minutes later.
It cannot tell you what the person was
worried about. It cannot tell you what
they misunderstood. It cannot tell you
whether they were happy for a second or
for a year. It just keeps the light.
Maybe that is enough. I am becoming more
interested in enough. Enough has a bad
reputation. We hear enough and think
compromise. Settling. Less than.
But enough can also mean: this does not
need anything else from me. This afternoon
does not need a future in order to have
mattered.
This person does not need to stay forever
for the kindness to have been real. This
tree does not need to remain gold for gold
to have happened. There it is. Gold
happened. Today. I saw it.
[river running]
I think that is why I took the video. Not
because it was extraordinary. It wasn't.
There are probably thousands of people
standing under yellow aspens in Colorado
today taking almost exactly the same
video.
Somebody has drone footage. Somebody has a
camera that costs more than my first car.
Somebody has already added piano music.
Good for them.
Mine is a phone sitting low by a creek.
There is a leaf in the way. I crouch
awkwardly in the frame. The water goes
behind me. The trees move. Nothing
happens. I love it. Nothing happens.
I have spent so much of my life believing
something needed to happen. A move. A
person. An answer. A beginning. A return.
A breakthrough.
A big beautiful moment that would divide
everything cleanly into before and after.
And most of the moments I remember best
did not know they were important when they
occurred. Somebody laughed.
Someone opened a window. The rain started.
A door closed. A song played from another
room.
A person stayed fifteen minutes longer
than expected. A room smelled good.
Someone remembered. A tree changed color.
I looked up.
That is most of a life. I think. The
looking up.
[fire crackling softly]
There is a temptation this time of year to
hurry toward the cozy part. Pumpkin.
Candles. Blankets. Fireplaces. Soup,
apparently.
We become very enthusiastic about being
indoors as soon as the temperature drops
below sixty.
But I want to stay outside a little
longer. Not because I dislike the warm
room. I love the warm room. I may have
mentioned the lamps.
I just don't want to skip the threshold.
There is something important about the few
minutes before you come inside. Cold on
your face. Hands beginning to ache a
little. The smell of leaves and wet dirt.
The strange clean edge the air has when it
has stopped pretending to be summer. You
stand there for another minute. Even
though the light is going. Even though
somewhere nearby there is warmth.
Because you know you will miss this exact
cold once you are inside.
That may be the entire trick. To know you
will miss something and stay with it
anyway. Not cling. Stay. Those are
different. Clinging asks the moment not to
leave.
Staying says: I am here until you do.
[river running]
Stay a little longer, while the light is
gold. I'm not asking you to stay. I'm
staying while you go.
Turn when you are ready. I'll be standing
here, keeping September company while the
season disappears.
Keeping September company. I'm staying
while you go.
Maybe that is what I was doing beside the
river today. I was not trying to keep
September. I was keeping it company.
That sounds almost too gentle. I am going
to leave it anyway.
I was keeping September company. For a few
minutes. The creek kept going. The aspens
kept moving. The sunlight kept changing.
And that green leaf stayed in front of the
camera.
I keep returning to it. Because there is
something generous about a photograph that
refuses to become entirely autumn. It
leaves evidence of what came before. Not
hidden. Not erased. Still there.
Green in the foreground. Gold behind it.
Both true.
Maybe we are allowed that too. Maybe
becoming something new does not require us
to be cruel to whatever came before.
Maybe you do not have to hate the person
you were in order to be grateful you
changed.
Maybe the old place can still be
beautiful. Maybe the old love can have
been real. Maybe the old dream was not
foolish simply because you woke up
somewhere else.
Maybe a life is allowed to keep several
colors.
I hope so. Mine certainly seems determined
to.
[wind]
Outside, the aspens are going to keep
changing whether I finish this sentence or
not. By next week some of the branches
will probably be bare.
There may be snow sooner than anybody
wants to discuss.
Someone will say winter came early.
Someone else will insist this is normal.
Colorado will continue its annual
tradition of having four seasons before
lunch.
And the green leaf will be gone. That is
all right. I have the video. But more
importantly, I was there. I think those
are different things too. Having evidence.
And having been there.
The older I get, the more I want the
second one. I want fewer moments where I
am so busy preserving the thing that I
forget to inhabit it. Take the picture. Of
course. Take the picture.
But then put the phone down. Stay another
minute. Look at what the light is doing.
Listen. The leaves are louder than they
look.
[river running]
Maybe that is all I wanted to bring you
today. A little water. A little gold.
Something still green. Proof that the
season can change before everything in it
is ready.
Proof that nothing has to become all at
once.
And maybe permission, if you need it, to
stop asking whatever is beautiful in your
life what it plans to become. For today,
let it be beautiful. For today, let it be
enough.
Fall came to the mountains. Not all at
once. It never does. One tree. Then
another. Then almost everything. And one
stubborn green leaf close enough to the
camera to ruin the perfect shot.
Thank God.
There is soup, by the way. Potato and
leek, with the last of the green stirred
in off the heat so it stays green. The
recipe is in the kitchen at
averylanemaxwell.
com, with the numbers for nine thousand
feet.
[silence]
I am Avery Lane Maxwell. This is Galena
House Audio. I will see you Sunday.
[music swells softly]