A Radical Scheme

“Nature is, above all, profligate. Don’t believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place? This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital. Extravagance! Nature will try anything once…No form is too gruesome, no behavior too grotesque. If you’re dealing with organic compounds, then let them combine. If it works, if it quickens, set it clacking in the grass; there’s always room for one more; you ain’t so handsome yourself. This is a spendthrift economy; though nothing is lost, all is spent.”

So writes Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I love that line about this deciduous business being a radical scheme, the brainchild of a manic-depressive with limitless capital. When I took a walk this morning, I stood beneath a neighbor’s maple in a shower of shimmering leaves, each one the product of a hundred sunny days, watching as they twirled and tumbled about me, drawn toward earth in a dance they will take just once. Extravagance indeed.

In Angeles Arrien’s book Living in Gratitude, the chapter on October focuses on the role of letting go in gratitude. Letting go requires trust and a willingness to release. She invites readers to think of what needs to be harvested in their lives. And she suggests taking a handful of leaves and writing something you are grateful for on each one. It’s a little hokey, sure, but I like the thought of those brightly colored leaves bearing our messages of thanksgiving back to the earth as they decay. We should be grateful for all of this extravagance, should we not?