Sturdy, Sage

I leaned over the rail of the cabin's second story. The ground below was covered in pine needles, like dull brown grass.  The pines towered over the other trees, sprawled out like sentries. The needles fell from their great height, hitting the ground with a sharp whisper. The terrain fell sharply, the cabins built into the side of those steep slopes, defying gravity. 

I gazed ahead.

A leaf fell from above, but fell so slowly, flipping and turning so often in its descent, I thought it would never reach the ground. I never saw a leaf fall so slowly, so elegantly. I would have had time to run down the stairs and across the yard to catch it, to prevent it from touching the earth at all. But I didn't. 

Of course, it was met with the same ending as all the other, inelegant leaves: the fast-falling, the pine needles, the colorful or brown, large or small. They all ended up at the same place, didn't they? On the ground. To be crushed beneath a careless footfall, to be trampled by an anonymous tread. Yet the trees stand proudly, undeterred by the slow and gradual loss of their foliage, their grandeur. They accept the change of time and the turning of the season. They accept loss like hoary-headed philosophers, sturdy and sage. 

I remind myself, then, to gaze not at the leaf, but at the tree.