During the week that followed Thanksgiving I considered the condition of the ranch, and it was a contemplative exercise.

Compared to most of the country, the foliage in South Texas changes color late in the calendar year, if it changes much at all. That the calendar sits open to December and the Texas red oaks have not shed their leaves of reds, russets, and maroons gives evidence to a particularly late “fall” this year.

October 15:  As the foliage progression of the Northeast passed peak conditions, trees at the Lost Madrone Ranch barely hinted of the seasonal change to come.

November 20:  A time when the Thanksgiving table is typically adorned with the splendor of autumn, only a simple spray was set for the feast celebration.

The ranch was scarcely speckled with emerging shades of rust and gold, a clue the turning leaves might fall short of the poetic imagery of Wolfe’s “golden month,” Bryant’s “year’s last, loveliest smile,” or Longfellow’s “Magnificent Autumn!”

The pallet of a South Texas fall may never resemble that of a Vermont September, but there are years where a riot of vibrant reds and yellows are aflame against the deep green color of cedar.

This was not one of those years.

This fall, fiery color came at sunset throughout the Thanksgiving week.

November 26:  Like a multi-colored blanket, expected colors of a fall season finally covered the hillsides, but there were no vivid yarns of scarlet or lemon.

Instead, there was a depth to the colors of the leaves — amber, rust, and gold — that felt like a familiar hymn, comforting in its expression of praise or promise while assuring of its truths and faithfulness.

The seasons will come and go. The truth of the Word is assured.

December 1:  Spots of faded color lingered across the landscape, a final collective autumn display before the blanket of winter claims the scene.

This seasonal cycle was a slow one to emerge, and yet, each week I searched for the expected change that did not show up in the expected way. When there was little to look at — and everything to look at — I abandoned the search for autumn color and challenged myself to notice the unnoticed before.

During these weeks of watching, I looked and saw, and saw and thought, and thought about how I see.

I recently read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard, a book that chronicles a year of observing the natural world, and more. In an acrobatic passage wrestling with fear, mortality, and courage, Dillard speaks to the courage of children as a function of innocence, and that “when we lose our innocence… we take leave of our senses.” “Only children keep their eyes open. The only thing they have got is sense; they have highly developed “input systems,” admitting all data indiscriminately.” Dillard quotes a collector of arrowheads as saying, “if you really want to find arrowheads, you must walk with a child — a child will pick up everything.”

Last month, when my niece, Ella, was visiting from Colorado we took several walks together at the ranch. I was struck by how she walked in nature — slowly, with her eyes focused,

and then squatting to look closer, often sweetly singing to herself,

picking up everything.

She saw the wonder of it, and each careful and patient trip to the ground yielded a treasure to pick up —

and sometimes to let go.

Why did I never give a leaf blanket to my fossil find?

How many fossilized rocks have I stepped over, never finding the heart inside?

Thank you, Ella. I will always remember our walks together.

Must we walk with a child to see?

Or, should we walk “as” a child to see?

With this question on my mind, I drove from the ranch, dropping in elevation below the breathtaking hilltop vistas, casting my last smile back on the peak “fall” days of 2017.

Once down the steep hill, the road out is narrow and rocky, lined with scraggly brush, seen every visit coming and going, and yet, had my input system ever admitted the data — all of it and indiscriminately?

I worked to see.

The brush was thick, dried, and mostly dead for the season, except for the green and wispy false willow, a weedy shrub with a species name “neglecta,” and for its purported use to revegetate damaged soil following the Dust Bowl, some refer to it as Roosevelt weed, poverty weed, or New Deal weed. False willow is the first to invade disturbed habitats and can aggressively invade fields and rangeland. A profusion of downy-white flowers bloom in fall, and the plant provides nectar for pollinators. Otherwise, there is not much value to the shrub.

This is not the stately hilltop neighborhood of red oaks, cherry and elms.

And then, I saw a singular shrubby tree with distinct ornamentation — the dried seed pods of a wafer ash. It was an “unnoticed before.”

I stopped and got out of the car to see.

A wafer ash is a widespread species although nondescript and unfamiliar to most people. The trunk is crooked with interlaced branches and found in the wild along fencerows and streams. The bitter fruit once used in beer-making in place of hops, gives it the common name, hop tree. Laden with an aromatic scent that some consider offensive, it also bears the common name of skunk bush. Despite its unremarkable character and offending stink, the wafer ash serves as a host to the giant swallowtail, strikingly beautiful and the largest butterfly in North America.

After flowering, a wafer ash produces a samara —a hard, dry fruit (unlike a fleshy seed found in an apple) that is surrounded with a fibrous, papery tissue that does not open along a seam like other seed pods that split and disperse the fruit, but holds tightly to the seed and functions as wings, propelling the seed through the power of wind, away from the parent, until landing where it will reproduce. The seed germinates inside the casing, breaking free only when ready to grow.

Do you share my childhood memory of throwing “whirlybirds” of a maple tree high in the air to watch them spin like helicopters as they fall to the earth? The samara of a wafer ash is like the winged seeds of maple trees only its design is a single disc-shaped wing.

This is the information one “sees” if they research a wafer ash.

I wanted to see a wafer ash as a child would see a wafer ash.

I wanted to notice it all, I wanted to pick it up, I wanted to sense.

The tree stood still and silent, with drooping clusters of papery wafers silhouetted against the blue sky.

Bundles of brown discs, flattened and clinging together,

hung like bands of friends supporting each other through everything they faced.

Single wafers shimmered as shiny gold coins, like a money tree hidden in the field for the taking.

And suddenly, it seemed as if what once was unnoticed was now like a trunk discovered in the attic that stored the secrets needed to answer my questions.

As a child would, I picked up a wafer and cradled it in my palm, like a leaf blanket for a fossil.

I fixed my eyes on which was most telling of my fate — the palmists practice of reading my hand or whether I gaze upon riches with wings that will fly toward heaven?

As a child would, I held the wafer to the sun, and altered my assumption of fragility from its papery appearance.

At the heart of the wafer, a single, tiny, seed-chamber blocked the brightest object of the sky — the sunlight illuminating the veins of its wings, the power behind its purpose, and exposing microscopic jewels of light more brilliant than the autumn leaves shining on the hilltop.

Next, looking back at the barren tree, something caught my eye. There was, strangely, one branch outstretched to the shade of a neighboring false willow, and at the very tip of the branch was a single shoot with two small leaves, the green of new growth.

One leaf stood straight at attention, and as the breeze began to blow, a soft ray of light danced through the willow aimed at the leaf, as if a spotlight was turning off and on, blinking, calling my attention.

I quickly reexamined the entire tree. Nothing. Not a poking out of green color from any of the other branches.

I saw… it was signaling… but I had no idea what I was seeing.

As a child would, I picked up a collection of treasures to carry with me, always.

Perhaps I will scatter samaras in the wind on the hilltop, supporting a tree of gold from the field to grow among the hardwoods.

Maybe I will keep a collection of samaras safe in a treasure box to put my eyes upon when I need answers.

I will delightfully let go of samaras and share them as a treasure with anyone who wants a gift. Sincerely, let me know.

Certainly, samaras will remind me to see as a child, admitting all data indiscriminately — the beauty and the unnoticed, and more importantly, the beauty in the unnoticed.

When we see as a child, we explore deep inside and claim the treasure of what is laid on our heart.

 

Scripture references: Matthew 13:44 and Proverbs 23:5