Evergreens

It's challenging to live in the middle of woodlands as I do and not see the cycles of nature - cycles of death and birth - at every turn. Near impossible, in fact, not to notice the slow rolling of seasons, as one declines the next begins, and over again, until the years circle around the wheel of time.  

I live in the woodland - and these reminders are ever-present.  

As I write this, outside my window a tall juniper sways in the chilly sunlit breeze of late winter.  Its winter color is a duller hue than its bluish green summertime color - but soon enough, that familiar pretty blue-green will creep back up into its limbs, and it will signal the coming of the warm season, where growing things emerge and thrives for months.   Where now the ground looks cold and hard, soon it will be loamy and soft, and small green shoots will erupt from its surface and reach toward the sun. 

These are the cycles where we live and die.  These are cycles that govern us, but which are almost universally unnoticed by us in our day-to-day.   And yet, the symbols that are given us through the cycles inform us of our own ultimate destiny: which is the continuation, perpetuation even, of life - on and on without end, as part of a greater timeline that remains unseen and unknowable to us within the construct of our physical reality here. 

Even as a child I was aware that there were bigger instruments playing - knew that there were hidden rhythms guiding the forces that govern our world. As an adult, I can see these rhythms more clearly, but their purpose and meaning remain hidden from me. I can only assume that an understanding of these larger elements will finally be understand by me when I have passed from this moment into the next, where I will see with more of my own self than I do here. 

At the very least, though, I am taught now by the evergreens - there is no death, only re-emergence over and over again; infinitely, as though each milestone was merely a way station, and the road that we travel goes ever on without end.