Learning life lessons from trees

I saw a leaf fall from a maple tree and watched as it slowly drifted towards the ground, occasionally buffeted by the light breeze. Dazzlingly bright yellow blending to burnt orange, with slightly upturned edges, it eddied down lazily, gracefully, like a parachutist or a flying squirrel, with the weighted petiole — the red leafstalk — leading the way.

Then, it made a final Trudeauesque pirouette before it settled on the grass, joining its compatriots.

Before long the wind will come and send the leaves whirling in a mad dance, spinning and tumbling over one another, the gusts driving them into heaps in garden beds and gutters and bird baths, their damp layers creating a groundcover, a winter refuge for all manner of insect life.

On fine days, the leaves precede you on the sidewalk, skittering ahead with a dry, hollow rustle, their stems like keels scratching mysterious messages onto the cement, like the planchettes that came with Ouija boards.

I have been reading about trees, about abscission, this time of year when leaves and fruits are programmed to detach from the parent plant. A layer of cells where the stem joins a twig expands, destabilizing the connection between the two, and the leaf — or the ripe fruit — begins its freefall.

At first, considering that process — the inevitable plummet to the ground — it sounded like the tree was committing multiple acts of self-sabotage, if you want to anthropomorphize a tree, which I am apt to do.

But then I realized that it is, of course, the very opposite — an act of self-preservation, as deciduous trees’ annual shedding of leaves and fruits renders them bare, yet girded for the coming winter, their stark canopies better able to sustain thrashing winds and heavy snow.

And that thought led me to realize that there’s a lesson in there for all of us.

How often do we lie awake in the dead of night and number our regrets, thinking of things we would’ve liked to have done differently, or of things unsaid we wished we had spoken?

Or perhaps we nurse grudges, wondering why someone said something to hurt us, or treated us unjustly — maybe then we dream of comeuppance. We are tormented by old family slights, interoffice politics, displays of rudeness in social settings.

Sometimes we may even still feel anxiety about events and situations long past — having to speak in public, writing a tough exam, missing a plane, running into someone you once knew well and forgetting their name.

These things are emotional detritus washed up on the shores of our consciousness at a time of day when we are perhaps most vulnerable. They plague our thoughts and ruin our sleep. And, the older you get, with more life experience behind you, the deeper those detritus piles grow.

Over the course of my career as a journalist, I have felt the suffocating weight of social media pile-ons. Not often, thankfully, but enough to know how unpleasant the experience is — trolls churning through your Twitter feed like voracious piranha trying to rip you to pieces with their sharp teeth. On the receiving end, it feels like bloodlust, with each attacker — pseudonymous and otherwise — infecting others in real time.

And if you become the target of a nasty post by someone who actually lives in your community, the relative shelter of the digital world falls away, and the firestorm feels real and very personal. I remember in one instance shutting off my phone and being afraid to go outside for fear that the online vitriol would translate into eggs or rotten tomatoes or stones being hurled my way. That fear only dissipated when I learned the piranhas had moved on, sensing fresher blood in the water.

It is that fear I remember sometimes when I am unable to sleep — the horror of being the object of someone’s scorn and nastiness, but most especially, the shock of being attacked on social media by a person I thought I knew professionally; someone with whom I believed I shared a mutual respect.

I don’t generally cling to grievances, but sometimes it’s hard to let go.

But then I think of the trees and abscission. About how sometimes we need to let things go, ditch that emotional ballast, in order to be stronger and more resilient, better prepared to weather coming storms.

And as I lie awake, wide-eyed and anxious in the middle of the night, I try to picture my worries as leaves of orange, red and gold, floating softly to the ground in a gentle spiral, troubling no more. Soon they will be raked into flower beds, or borne on the wind for parts unknown, and eventually, turn into dust.

Pam Frampton lives in St. John’s. Email pamelajframpton@gmail.com | X: @Pam_Frampton | Bluesky: @pamframpton.bsky.social