The Africa Tree is Dead



This is an actual tree in Africa. This is my tree's twin.

 When I was very young there were more fields than yards, most of the fields have windscreen trees from years of farming but this one field had a lone tree near it's center, to me the tree looked like something out of National Geographic. I always wanted to take a picture but seeing it in life was better than a photograph.

That tree made me want to see things. I want to go to Africa and see real African trees.

The tree looked like it belonged somewhere else and for much of my life I have felt that only part of me belonged in my small town.

A town that in the last 20 years has become less and less recognizable. The yuppies and houses have taken over. It has gone from being Virginia to Northern Virginia, land of sprawl and nothingness. A hostile (sometimes) foreign land which I have some how landed back in after running away to better more interesting places.

The other day, because I started writing this when I first saw it but couldn't make it work, I drove past the field where the tree stands. It is still a field, but now a house sits in the far corner and it is fenced for cows and horses. As I drove passed I saw the limbs more on the ground rather than in the sky. Progress strangled the tree's home and nature is finishing it off. The tree has been dead for several years, the leaves are few and far between but now it will never have the chance to try to bud again. It is more than dead. It is broken and with it my spirit. And my connection to this place.

Falling for Fall

There was frost on my car when I got in it at 6:30 this morning. It's November 2, last week there were days in the 80s and the week before a day in the 90s, now I have socks and a sweatshirt on and I can't feel my hands or feet (I'm indoors, if that isn't a given variable).

I need you to know that Autumn is my most favorite season and last year I missed it while I was living in London, the weather turned cool but the leaves stayed green. This year the color is beautiful, the grass is finally green again after the summer draught and the leaves are yellow and orange and red and everywhere. It is breathtaking.

I drove home this afternoon and as I hit the dirt road and drove through the tunnel of trees and it was all yellow, the sky, the walls of trees and the edges of the road, all yellow. I can't really describe it, but it is the most beautiful thing, that half-mile of road is the reason I don't really mind living at home. That half-mile is the reason Robert Frost is such a successful poet (I know, I know he's not from here, he's from much farther north and I hear that New England has the most gorgeous Falls).

I need a few more days of warm then I'll surrender to the cold. And if after two days of warm the colors fade and the grey sets in, I'll be ok.