Nature Table

As I walked, I grew tired of taking photographs.

I grew tired of thinking, listening, smelling, hearing, feeling, trying to write, trying to notice, trying to think about how I would write.

Grew tired of the creative challenge I had set myself: exploring, looking for evidence of autumn, looking for 29 things.  I grew weary. Things looked jaded.

I stopped myself.  Stopped trying to capture, to process, to notice, to think.

Started to gather instead.  Gathered objects: real, tactile, dirty, wet, curled up, broken, twiggy, wet.

Felt the pleasure of the objects in my fingers: seeds, leaves, burrs, nuts.

Noticed the imperfection of the objects, more real than the photos of the colours.

Dull, faded, brown, dull.  Curled up, broken.  Falling apart, disintegrating.

Wanted it real, not processed.  Wanted 3D, not flat.

Wanted to feel through my fingers, not think through my mind.

So I walked through the woods, gathering leaves.  Felt about seven years old.

Gathering leaves for my grandmothers: look, look at this one!  Look at this, what a beauty, look at this!

Gathering leaves for a nature table at school: look what we’ve found, what we’ve noticed, what we’ve learned.  Look how we’ve gathered the feel of autumn.

My spirits lifted as I walked, not taking photos, not writing,  not thinking, just gathering.

Processed it later, of course.

A fragment of conversation:

Why do we stop gathering up leaves and seeds to show, share, tell, celebrate?

A photograph

A word picture on my wall:

But still.  Still, as I touch it, the picture’s in 3D.  It’s changing day by day.  The leaves turning dry.  The seeds hardening.  The berries rotting.

It’s real.

It’s dark, imperfect, curled, up, disintegrating.  It’s darkly red, it’s reddening darkly.

The picture is red at its heart.

~~~

And somehow I know there’s one more than one lesson here.

It’s a reminder not to write, sometimes, but rather just to gather, to bundle up leaves, to go back to childhood, to celebrate, gather and enjoy.

But it’s also a story of nature’s harvest.  The gathering time for a woman.

Patterns repeating.

Curled up.

Torn and tattered.

Dull, and colourful.

Colourful, and dull.

Disintegrating.  Slowly letting yourself fall apart.

Perfect imperfect.

Imperfectly perfect.

Three dimensional.

Red at heart.