Green Trees

In my teaching science course, we had to do a lab outside where we were supposed to write what we saw, smelled, and heard as we observed trees in the fall. 

That took about 3 minutes, and then my mind reached peak symbolism-mode. Sometimes it takes over and I can't stop it, but usually I'm not writing so it goes unrecorded. I figured "why not?" so here's what I wrote underneath my see/smell/hear chart. I'm not even sure I get where I was going.

The fall is a season of changes. Changes in color, shape, temperature. It’s a season of loss for a season of barrenness, a season of waiting for a season of newness. 

It makes me wonder about the trees that don’t change, that won’t lose their leaves like the others. Is that a good thing that they don’t lose their leaves? Bad? Neither?

 The green trees never have to sit dormant for months, cold and bare, waiting for vibrancy to spring back. They still flower with the other trees in the spring, but they don’t undergo the same transformation as their neighbors.

 Why does that make them less impressive to me? Why is it so intriguing to see the warmth of summer trees transformed into the peak of color, emptied for the cold gray of winter trees, and then replaced again by green? Why am I thinking so much about trees? I’m supposed to just be looking at them. 

But we never see the green trees lose all they have. We never see them empty and lifeless. They’re never stripped of all they’ve worked for since spring. Granted it’s not a permanent change, but still. It’s all taken away. 

Isn’t it the emptiness and lifelessness that makes us appreciate spring so much? If the trees all stayed the same, there would be much less to admire. There would be no little blooms to watch reappear after a long season of dormancy. 

Some trees lose it all, and some trees never have to face even temporary bareness. Wouldn’t that be nice? I really don’t know...

 Part of me says yes. It would be nice to never lose what you’ve worked for. But part of me says no. Because the green trees never experience the slow coming-back of life.