The Shared Wisdom of Trees & Mary Oliver

An October day in the wildwood

Welcome back to the wildwood, and to the rusty old mailbox overgrown with ivy. If this is the first time you have visited here then you may wish to open this invitation. In finding your way to All The Wild Magic I trust that you have arrived exactly when you were meant to. This letter is for you.

Dear reader ,

Today is the day. For reasons known only amongst the trees, they are letting go of so many leaves. Drifts of them fall like snow through air without breeze. Tick, tick, they land, covering everything. Covering the mushrooms that I have been seeking on the slopes of the wood. Covering the garden around Hazel Cottage. I find them in my hair and in my hood. I wade through drifts, the snaking footpath around the hut now a dry leaf-river.

Here in the valley the cherry trees are wild and tall; their leaves sail like paper boats when they fall, pink with the memory of blossom and berry. The field maple leaves are different, eager; little yellow hands that print themselves upon the earth. Further into the woodland the beeches invite the land to rest after its high-spirited summer. Their russet quilt lies wide and neat, covering everything but the burn.

Wandering through this precious day I stop and think of lines from In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver.

"To live in this world

you must be able 
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and when the times comes to let it
go,
to let it go."

I look to the bare branches of some of the trees. The dark arms of the silver-barked birch are already open to the winter. In the summer the birches held on tight to their leaves through even the worst of storms. But when the time came, they let go so lightly, a gift of yellow diamonds fluttering to the earth.

I stand beneath a bare birch and open my arms to the sky, mirroring its shape. The wisdom of holding tightly and letting go lightly is almost,

almost,

but not quite,

within my reach.

How does the shared wisdom of trees and Mary Oliver land for you? Are the leaves falling where you are too?

With warmest autumn wishes,

Sophie