after the wind

West winds tore through the mountain ridges last night.

I heard them before sleep — working through the tree line, indifferent to what they unmade.

By morning, the path down to the grove was spotted with limb and leaf still holding the color of the living. I took the axe from its hook without much thought. Some mornings are already decided for you.

I stopped at the red maple grove just east of the creek’s bend. Nature had been busy changing the use of things again.

It is a particular truth of this world that usefulness is never fixed. We learn this early and forget it often. Water becomes ice. Seed becomes harvest. A branch that shaded one corner of sky all summer will warm a room in February.

The form changes.

The purpose continues.

✧

I spent most of the morning clearing brush and stacking wood against the greenhouse wall. There is a satisfaction in that kind of work that is difficult to explain precisely — seeing the transformed thing ordered and ready. Each cord was something else only an hour before.

By the time I returned to the terrace, the light had new pattern across the stone. I sat with pen and journal and did what I often do when my hands have finished their work and my mind has not.

I thought about the changes I did not choose.

There have been many. Seasons arriving without permission. Winds rearranging what I had carefully settled into place. I have resisted them with considerable energy. I have argued with weather. I have told myself the life I built required no further alteration.

I was wrong more often than not.

The maple was not asked permission.

Neither are we.

✧

What I have come to understand — slowly, and somewhat against my nature — is that the change I resist most fiercely is often pointing toward a life I had not yet imagined for myself.

Not destruction.

Reassignment.

That was the thought I carried with me across the terrace this morning while the last of the branches dried in the sun.

Not why is this happening.

But rather:

What will I become after the next wind?

If we are fortunate, life will ask many things of us before it is finished.

Most of the meaningful ones arrive unannounced.

✧

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This letter is now part of the Conservatory — those who find one often need another.