Most trees now stand barren against the graying sky. Although some red dogwood and yellow poplar still clutch their final flames. But, each dawn reveals more exposed branches joining the stark calligraphy of walnut, birch, oak, and ash filling the sky above the forest trail.
One tree still holds its light.
By the stream’s edge rises a Dawn Cypress, planted perhaps a century ago by unknown hands. Now it soars ten stories high, its trunk too wide for three men’s linked arms to encircle. Pin-straight, it pierces the Pennsylvania sky. This giant towers over house and forest, its crown dancing in winds the earth cannot feel. Often, it sways alone while the other trees in the valley’s crease remain still.
How this tree came to root here remains a mystery. Science once knew it only as a fossil—until the 1940s, when living specimens were discovered in remote Chinese valleys. Though it bears needles and cones like native junipers and pines, the Dawn Cypress keeps its own calendar. After other branches stand bare, it weaves golden threads of seeds. Its needles transform to match its name. Dawn colors spread through the branches like slow fire. These burnished needles drift down for weeks, carpeting the winter lawn in gold. They follow me everywhere, clinging to shoes and wheelchair tires, tracking sunrise into the house.
As the days shrink and the cold deepens, I’ve made an evening ritual of piloting my electric wheelchair down the narrow ramp, up the steep driveway, along the road, and through a neat suburban development to its end, where I can watch the sunset paint a standing cornfield beneath a vast sky.
I’ve always loved a crisp autumn walk. As that life recedes, I’m grateful for this wheelchair that grants me passage once again. Like a brass diving bell, it allows me to explore a world no longer suited to my body, moving through the once-familiar with all the wonder of early divers discovering beauty in the deep.
Tonight, I guided my chair to find the farmer had finally harvested his feed corn, leaving only stubble where snow will soon drift and dance. I watched the sun sink behind this final act of the growing season, then turned homeward as darkness gathered.
On my way back, I noticed the maple trees that once blazed so brightly now stand stripped. Even their fallen glory has vanished—raked into bags by careful homeowners and hauled away. In some yards, Christmas lights flicker too early. Plastic reindeer already graze one lawn, as if autumn were already a memory.
If autumn speaks in goodbyes, we near its final whisper.
As I reached the valley’s edge, the last western light of day caught the crown of the Dawn Cypress, standing tall in the east. Its branches ignited from within—gold against gray—casting the colors of sunrise across the yard, the house, the skeleton woods.
As if the sun were rising in the east even as it set in the west.
As if the world had folded, letting dawn and dusk share the same sky.
As if, here at winter’s edge, this strange east-western light reveals a truth:
There are no beginnings or endings.
Only a circle—wide enough to hold
horror and beauty,
grief and grace,
departure and return.
One Response
If our physical bodies are just a vehicle to traverse this planet, then we should expect some wear and tear- what’s amazing is you’re able to have these sacred moments and even adventures, despite a major system failure. This life does often seem like one long day… but whatta’ day indeed.