It’s nearly noon but dark and quiet, with a cool rain falling outside.  C&D have been inspired to work on a project involving dozens of pictures cut from coloring sheets, workbooks, stickers (which have been applied to scrap pieces of paper, and then cut around) and coloring books.   Bits of paper, glue, scissors, and crayons have somehow spread themselves over the school side floor.  This is their favorite kind of mess, which they don’t consider a mess at all, of course, and they look seriously, purposefully, busy. 

So I sit down and take a minute—well, maybe two—for catching up, and doing those things I’ve been meaning to do all day, all week, all month.  And here is one of those things.

Earlier in this month I received this e-mail* from Jim Stevenson, a local bird guide.  His perspective on the change of seasons made me smile, and he said I could post it here.  What colors have you been hiding?

Enjoy.

* To get your own birdie e-mails from Jim Stevenson, follow the directions here.

~~~

In my former life – the best part of me – I used to pile a coupla dozen of my high schoolers in the old school bus currently parked in my back yard, and take them to the North Georgia mountains. We always made this trip to Blood Mountain about this time, as the forest was afire with reds, golds and purple. We would always arrive at night in the old "Enterprise," but I swear I could see the flaming canopies at 10pm.

Our "work" there was salamander research, in cold streams strewn with Dusky Salamanders – a far worse proposition to separate into species than the Empidonax flycatchers that nearly send bird guides to tears. But we always went in early October, learning some biology we’ve never forgotten, and making friends for life. I will never be a better person than I was with those young, keen minds.

On many of the trips, I shared with them just exactly why leaves turn colors in fall, and maybe a little Sunday School got thrown in, as we all missed church that weekend.

It seems all year the color of leaves is determined by the pigment in the leaf called chlorophyll, and most of those like A and B are green. Thus, leaves are green most of the year. Oak leaves are green, pine leaves (needles) are green and peach trees have green leaves. See, there’s a pattern here. No doubt those leaves are pretty thankful they have all that chlorophyll, not only coz it allows them to photosynthesize and make sugar, but it allows them to look like all the other leaves. Whew!

But in early fall, with a different bend of the light, and sometimes influenced by variables such as temperatures and moisture, their chlorophyll begins to die. OMG!!! THEY WON’T BE GREEN ANYMORE!!!

It turns out there are some other pigments in leaves as well, but they are covered up by the chlorophyll most of the year. But right after the green stuff dies out, they color the leaves in glory, enough to cause thousands of people to drive hundreds of miles to behold the spectacle. Or as a famous person once said on another mountain far from here, "Not Solomon and all his glory was arrayed like one of these."

It occurs to me that we are a little like those leaves. We try awfully hard not to stand out, and to be normal, coz that’s safe. Deeply rooted in our insecurities, and with emotional scars from the times we dared to be different, and got hung out to dry, we all-too-often just want to blend in. And we keep the most beautiful parts of us safely under wraps, hidden from even our best friends.

While motoring some clients around Saturday along Sportsman’s Road, I saw the attached Yellow-crowned Night-Heron standing in the Salicornia, with its stalks as red as Blood Mountain in early October. Many memories raced through my aging brain faster than you can say "electrodes." Just as these succulents have the same basic chemistry as North Georgia’s trees, we all have much of the same hidden beauty safely tucked away beneath our normalcy. 

You are not green; those are Martians and Vulcans. You also have your reds and golds and purples. And whether you are nine or ninety, the God-given uniquenesses make you who you are, just as much as your 46 chromosomes and that same many years of upbringing. It should be our nature to nurture our peculiarities, and be ourselves no matter what.

Do that thing you’ve always wanted to do. Take that chance. Finally say those words that have made you bite your tongue for years. Celebrate the one life we all have. Why be normal? And remember that just as those leaves fall to the ground not too long after sharing their most beautiful side, our existence on this rock is but a blink in the cosmic eye. How, really, are we living these precious few days?

And to the 1360 of you who are kind enough to receive my pictures, it is with great love and respect that I thank you for letting me be me.

I’ve never known how else to be.