Up the Sunbeam

In shades of winter white, the buckeye tree waits, hushed and still. It stands outwardly dead and cold in the rain and mist that drapes it in a pale shroud.  A fleeting moment of diffused sunlight touches the almond-colored bark and it brightens coolly. A few tenacious buckeyes cling stubbornly to the tree, not ready to fall . . . not just yet. The buckeye tree speaks to me in the days leading up to the turn of the calendar that drops the final leaves and buckeyes on the old year. 2010 has been more than I ever expected . . . and less. It has been MORE . . . . . . busy, . . . rewarding, . . . painful, . . . terrifying, . . . trying, . . . victorious, . . . grace-infused, . . . celebratory, . . . people-full . . . and love-soaked than I knew it would be. It has been LESS . . . . . . plentiful, . . . complicated, . . . home-bound, . . . sad, . . . distant, . . . tentative, . . . fear-driven than it might have been. I am thankful for all the bad things th...

-- On a recent trip to the summit of Mt. Tamalpais w ith my family, we walked a trail that circled the mountain just below the summit, treating us to a 360° view of the whole San Francisco Bay Area from the top. At the trailhead, we picked up the pamphlet that would give us information at numbered markers along the hour-long route. At one such marker our paper tour guide told us the name of a plentiful tree we could observe on the hike. The manzanita trees that were all along this trail were a sour c e o f endless photographic fascination to me. They were shedding their old bark in tight little curly-cues like decorative chocolate on a fancy birthday cake. The previous year's bark curled away as the tree shrugged off last year's skin, revealing a brand new, eye-achingly deep scarlet layer beneath. :::::::::::::::::::: My birthday. A marker.  A checkpoint. Maybe a crossroads. Old year me peeled away. New year me underneath. Each birth year, each pass by...