Why can't I do that?

Nature has a way of making things look easy. As an example, there’s the annual leaf-drop of deciduous trees here in the Northern Hemisphere. Daylight hours dwindle, temperatures start to sag, and in not much more than a month the once densely clad branches are bare. Suddenly, all those thousands of bright-colored leaves are on the ground, like a party dress slipped off onto the floor after a gala event.

It can seem as if the trees simply turn a switch, but it’s more complex than that. It begins with the waning of daylight hours. Even if the weather stays warm—which it did this fall—the decreasing daylight signals to the trees that winter is coming. It’s time to turn off the energy production operation, send sap into the roots, and hunker down until spring.

The part we see and love is the color change. Triggered by daylight and temperature, trees stop producing green-pigmented chlorophyll and pull it back out of leaves; the component nutrients are reabsorbed and stored for future use. In the absence of chlorophyll, yellow and orange pigments that were present in the leaves the whole time become visible. Something I learned just this autumn is that unlike the yellows and oranges, the reds and purples are not already present. Those deeper colors are created by the production of a type of flavonoids called anthocyanins. Why trees do this is part of a different story.

The point of talking about all this is that last summer Charlie offered to paint my office for me. The room was the only one in the house that hadn’t had a new coat of paint in about 40 years. I realized that in addition to the fresh paint, this would be a perfect opportunity for me to unload a bunch of things and return to my office only what I actually need. It took me about three days to move everything out—furniture, books, files, and supplies being the easiest to deal with. Requiring no big decisions, these items were also the easiest to move back.

What I’m left with now is a dismayingly large mishmash of stuff. Gardening / horticultural / environmental articles I pulled out of magazines years ago for future reference and possible column topics. Seed catalogs. Handouts from flower shows and horticultural symposiums. Birthday and holiday cards I’ve received over the years. Letters. Mementos from previous jobs. (See: an engraved, chrome-plated railroad spike from my years with Penn Central Corporation...) Intriguing bits and pieces of stuff from nature. (See: geometrically shaped rocks; dead insects and miscellaneous insect wings; Really. Big. Leaves.) A stash of reusable tote bags. The accumulated odds and ends of many years of life.

Of course, while these things are interesting to me and hold personal significance and memories, many, if not most of them will never actually get used again. In order to have a greater sense of order and calm in my writing space, shouldn’t I get rid of at least a third of all that stuff? It’s not so simple. Part of the challenge is that without tangibles, I tend to not remember things. This particular not remembering isn’t an aging brain thing; it’s always been this way for me. And so, I’m afraid that if I part with too much I’ll lose my past.

Is it possible that I’m a bit premature in wanting to jettison so much? For instance, I’m still writing. Do I want to toss so much reference material? Is nature's influence at work?Do I unconsciously want my office to look the way the lawn does after the last leaves are raked off and put into the hedgerow to decompose?  Whatever, I envy the trees for doing so seamlessly what I struggle with. Granted, they have just one decision to make—drop everything all at once, not leaf by leaf—and they’ll put out new leaves next spring. They’re involved in self-preservation, not aesthetics. I try to remember that leaf drop is so much more complex than it looks, it costs the trees some effort, and it doesn’t happen in an instant. Plus, deciduous trees have a system in place that’s been working for them for millions of years. I’m just now trying to come up with one.

In the same way that trees reabsorb nutrients from their leaves, could I take some nourishment from the things I’m thinking of discarding and store the memories they hold in photographs, and then let them go? I'm still not sure.