The Continuation of Life Through the Seasons

As Fall embarks on our visual landscape, I am always reminded of the cycles of life.

With its last vestiges of color and energy, nature appears to send off the previous year with a celebration of color.

Before it slowly withdraws itself into its frozen state of browns and grays...sleeping in its protective blanket of fallen leaves.

How amazing though, this show nature performs. This chemistry of life so ingeniously maneuvered that it defies logic. All in preparation for the continuation and preservation of life to begin again.

With each yellow, orange, red and purple that fills our sight, there exists an intricate cohesiveness taking place:

Throughout the growing season, leaves appear green because of a pigment called chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is found in little disc-like structures called chloroplasts which are dotted throughout plant cells. Chlorophyll molecules absorb red and blue wavelengths of light from the sun but hardly any green, meaning that green wavelengths are reflected back to our eyes and hence the leaves appear this color. Source

As the days become shorter and there is less sunlight, leaves stop replenishing chlorophyll and we are suddenly able to see the other wavelengths of color in the leaves like yellows and oranges. The reds and purples appear from the sugars that stagnate in the leaves as well as the relative pH balance of the sap and soil Which would explain why some years express more vivid reds than others.

If you truly think about it, we are so connected to the seasons. Despite our modern lifestyles or how much we seem to veer off the path of life or have our highs or lows, we are reminded every day (through nature) that life has cycles and continues. It is so intimately interwoven in our lives with family traditions, the food we eat, the clothes we wear....

Even our emotions and the air we breath is woven with the tapestry of nature

Indeed.....

And life continues...........

..

I wrote a little poem about this continuity of life and the evolution of truth that is passed on with every cycle/season of life. It was actually the Fall that inspired this poem.

Life bends to meet the light
while it's roots remain grounded by it's longing

It must weather the seasons of creation
while drawing wisdom from it's shadow

And thus the seed of it's beginning expands beyond the confines of any reason

It is a blended dance a symbiotic grace
within the paradigm of least resistance

And as the winter's bitter winds lay bare its tender reed
It offers itself willingly to the genesis of it's creed

Preserving the bounty of its truth
within the new spring's seed.

I love Fall!!!!!