The Gift

Letter VIII ~ Autumn

Dear Yggdrasil,

It’s so lovely to see you again and sit beneath your boughs, your leaves all around me in differing shades of glimmering gold, clementine and rust. You are still taking your time in turning, but your autumn has begun; it could not be more beautiful. It is early morning and the air is cold on my face, so I will not linger long, but it was high time for a visit.

I keep anticipating you. Yesterday I wrote you a long letter, imagining that you had turned. Today, I finally visited, only to find that, mid-October, you are still enjoying your Chlorophyll. Your change seems slow to me, but I know that it has begun. It is a matter of perspective Leaves are starting to twirl all around, yet many are still green. Like, me, you are hanging on. I know that your colours, when they come, will be all the more beautiful for it.

What have you seen in my absence? I’m sorry that I could not be there for the process, too caught up in my own cycle. Perhaps we were meant to come together, now that we are both ready. The leaves crackle and crunch beneath every one of my movements and those drifting down feel like gifts landing on my arms and hair. Let’s sit together, just for ten minutes and absorb this season. Ten minutes of my time, just a few seconds of yours. The air is so still that I hear each leaf falling.

The sun will not part the clouds today, but you are unbothered by this, enjoying each weather as it comes and goes. How do you keep warm? I do not understand it but I will do some research so that I might understand you better.

I will go now and take a single one of the gifts you offered and press it in an old book, to look at this winter in my candlelit flat, when the days have been engulfed by darkness.