The flaming colors of autumnal burning bushes ablaze with their vibrant red have always been an enchanting seasonal spectacle for me, a reminder of natures enduring beauty. This years’ have been especially poignant for me as I wander a dear friend’s land where they are in abundance, each one painstakingly planted by him.  When their colors first began to appear this year, he was making progress on the task of a much-needed barn clean out.  The seat of a swing that had undoubtedly belonged to his younger years came to my notice and I envisioned him pushing his laughing daughters in the swing.  My eyes welled up as my mind was seized by the sharp contrast of the past and present.

When I see the beauty of the bushes in bloom, it is always with a bittersweet nostalgia, a longing for my younger self, that time in my life when I didn’t know of the brevity of life. With times cursorily escape, these bushes have become a reminder that circumstances will alter life’s transitions.  Time’s relentless exodus will take me away from familiar faces, places, hopes and loved ones; much like the burning bushes colors disappearing each year.  It saddens me.

However, the ebb and flow of life provokes me to savor every opportunity to behold not only the burning bushes with their hues shouting ”Look at me”, but all of nature’s gifts. Now, I live in the present, appreciating the minutiae and the briefest of minutes, knowing that these moments will never return.  I will not walk these same woods again; a felled tree, a dry ravine, the sun dappled fields are ever changing.  Unlike the fiery foliage whose plant DNA offers its perpetual return. 

Donna Heatherly