The last leaf to fall

Years ago I wrote about watching the sole remaining leaf break free from its towering tree. This is an edited version of that column. While it originally was published in 1997 and reprinted in 2006, it remains as pertinent today as in those years.


I'd driven to a point near Beaver Lake and gotten out to enjoy a brief winter warm spell that had settled over Northwest Arkansas.

Gazing upward, I noticed the lone leaf fluttering in the breeze on the highest branch of the tallest tree. The tenacious little thing had managed to hold fast through weeks of rain and frigid winds.

As I watched, the brown, feathery leaf suddenly disconnected before my eyes and began its twirling graceful dance toward the ground. It initially sailed sideways, then momentarily upward, then in slow arcing circles until settling beneath the tree.

It struck me at that instant just how much of nature's wonder was revealed in this common experience that repeats itself all around us billions of times each year.

In early spring, this aged tree had been covered with thousands of tiny buds, each of which had sprouted to unfold into lime-green leaves that steadily matured and darkened as summer evolved.

By sometime in June, every leaf had achieved its greatest potential, opening to accept and photosynthesize the light that ensured the tree's survival.

They were shimmering and pliant in those midsummer months, capable of withstanding the most rampaging storm. But each leaf's destiny did not lie in the fleeting strength of midlife vibrancy. As with all of life, each was readily expendable.

The leaves were fleeting segments of a greater whole in the host trees that replenished their decorative coverings year after year until the trees themselves one day drop to the ground.

And so the leaf I studied that afternoon had lived half a year in its penthouse perch as all others that had budded alongside it months earlier had taken flight as fall winds began to sweep them away.

For me, the glory for any leaf, and the goal toward which it grows from the moment it appears, must be the opportunity to finally separate from the twig that had bound it firm. Its joy, if a leaf could feel, would be to experience those few seconds to dance freely on the whim of the breezes.

This moment of release was the only opportunity each leaf would have to realize the feeling of sailing unfettered after its lifetime of confinement. For those few precious seconds this leaf I watched could express itself in the unique way in which it twirled away from the limbs.

Once settled into the earth near the trunk that had hosted its life, this leaf along with all the others would still continue in a different way to nourish the buds to emerge in Aprils to come.

Today, as we children of the great world war are in the autumn of our own lives, much as the final leaf I watched that day, we will begin to disconnect one by one to make our final, uniquely individual journey back to the earth from whence we sprung.

Our colors and baby boomer forms also are noticeably altered from the greenest years. The shade of our hair is changing. Our eyes and hearing have diminished. There are more wrinkles and bulges and indications that the vigor and boundless energy we knew just yesterday when life was April green are now but recorded memories.

Back in our 13th year, or 21st or 33rd, we couldn't fathom leaving. Falling away from the lives we knew was the furthest thing from our youthful minds as we focused on creating families, lives and careers in the decades ahead.

Today, however, we share the morning chill of mid-autumn. We've come to realize the moment of our disconnection and free fall is all too real. Others we have known already have made the trip.

The leaf I watched that late winter afternoon could not know it would be the last of its group to set sail. While we never know when our moment to soar will arrive--and for many still in the greenest of life that time comes much too soon--we understand it's part of life's cycle, reflected in an event as common as the last leaf to spiral from its tree.

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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].

Editorial on 11/29/2014

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