Changing Colors

Changing Colors

   Walking home earlier this morning, my wife and I glanced up at the foothills and were surprised to see so many fall colors decorating the hillsides, surprised because it seemed that just two days ago, the colors weren't there.  Were we simply not paying attention or had the bushes and trees accelerated their seasonal change into hibernation?  I had somewhat written about the autumn process in an earlier post about getting out but as a quick recap, the reds, oranges and yellows one sees in the leaves of autumn are always there, simply overshadowed and camouflaged of sorts with the green of the chlorophyll.  And there's always those thoughts, as the trees and plants gauge the waning light of the days, that perhaps nature does more more than we do regarding when it's time to start storing and getting ready for the winter (although it would appear that nature is having a bit of a difficult time dealing with all the atmospheric changes this human population is adding to the mix).

   When I used to live in northern California, I would gauge the changing seasons by the produce.  Stores would fill with berries and lettuces and vegetables so missed for much of the year.  As cooler weather came (but certainly nothing like the snow and cold of where I live now), fog would roll in and dewy droplets would gather on windshields and eyelashes.  Suddenly, ovens and slow burning stoves were housing soups and casseroles and emitting smells that broadcast a welcome to those fortunate to walk in and capture a whiff, sort of like a batch of cookies just coming out of the baker's lair.

   Alas, globalization has changed much of that, the groceries now present year round as if expected.  Where are those fresh oranges?  And yes, it is nearing December but where are they, we ask?  Once I remember talking to an apple worker from Colorado (he said that his state was second only to the state of Washington when it came to producing apples, which turned out to be a giant fib that I caught hook, line and sinker...but what's more surprising is that the state of New York ranks as #2 ).  One thing he did tell me (which turned out to be true) was that of the long-term storage of apples so that consumers could bite into a crisp apple in the dead of winter.  Called controlled-atmospheric storage or CA, this is how the Washington Apple site described it: CA storage is a non-chemical process.  Oxygen levels in the sealed rooms are reduced, usually by the infusion of nitrogen gas, from the approximate 21 percent in the air we breathe to 1 percent or 2 percent.  Temperatures are kept at a constant 32 to 36 degrees Fahrenheit.  Humidity is maintained at 95 percent and carbon dioxide levels are also controlled.  Exact conditions in the rooms are set according to the apple variety.  Researchers develop specific regimens for each variety to achieve the best quality.  Computers help keep conditions constant...The large, airtight CA rooms vary in size from 10,000 boxes to 100,000 boxes, depending on the volume of apples produced by the apple shipper and his marketing strategies.  His one hint was this...if you buy a crisp apple and about three days later it's a bit mushy, it's likely a stored apple, the fresh apples remaining crisp for nearly a week or more.

   So I thought of that quote that admires the gracefulness of a dying leaf, the colors becoming brilliant before the final unlatching from the tree, followed by the graceful fall to the ground, ready to add to the earth even in its death.  Chaplin Cheryl Downey put it this way: The leaf’s attachment has changes to make before releasing and so do we.  Like the leaf, the dying one and those attached to that person eventually make changes that allow release.  “Loosening” occurs physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually, including acceptance of the changes, imagining life without the other(s), feeling settled or done in relationships (words of love spoken, forgiveness felt and/or expressed), experiencing withdrawal/separation, transitioning from the physical body to one’s inner self or spirit.  “Loosening” may be as simple as experiencing the power of Being in the present moment of Life.


   And so it was watching J.B. Miller, a palliative care physician at the Zen Hospice Project, provide one of the most professional and meaningful talks on TED: ...we need to lift our sights, to set our sights on well-being, so that life and health and healthcare can become about making life more wonderful, rather than just less horrible.  Beneficence...since dying is a necessary part of life, what might we create with this fact?  By "play" I am in no way suggesting we take a light approach to dying or that we mandate any particular way of dying.  There are mountains of sorrow that cannot move, and one way or another, we will all kneel there.  Rather, I am asking that we make space -- physical, psychic room, to allow life to play itself all the way out -- so that rather than just getting out of the way, aging and dying can become a process of crescendo through to the end...We can design towards it.  Parts of me died early on, and that's something we can all say one way or another.  I got to redesign my life around this fact, and I tell you it has been a liberation to realize you can always find a shock of beauty or meaning in what life you have left...If we love such moments ferociously, then maybe we can learn to live well -- not in spite of death, but because of it.  Let death be what takes us, not lack of imagination.

   As with the apples, it would seem that we fight for preservation, we rail against aging, that "go not gently into the night" rationale.  We change shapes and have surgeries and yes, even try being like an apple with hyperbaric chambers.  But there's no escape from what we see, whether it's in the mirror or in the mountains.  Fall's colors bring, no force, our attention to change.  It is earth, our home, reminding us of the cycle.  It is now time to celebrate summer and recognize its end growing ever nearer.  It is time to hunker down...and to gracefully let go, and to just imagine.