Change

People are rivers, always ready to move from one state of being into another. It is not fair, to treat people as if they are finished beings. Everyone is always becoming and unbecoming.

From atop my ridgeline perch I take in a valley of exploding fall colors. For a moment the cycle of death and rebirth stands still as the warm sun caresses the bare shoulders of both mountain and me. Then the cool air of fall nips at my skin, a reminder that this moment in time is moving away even as it arrives. With an encroaching 30th birthday I consider my own changes and seasonal transitions that brought me to this point. Blogger Nicole Audette observes how we are hardest on ourselves, especially "when we're living in that uncomfortable space between where we came from and where we're going." My ridgeline runs often highlight this uncomfortable space, where I'd prefer to daydream about the young tree climber I was yesterday and the accomplished alpinist I might become tomorrow than to remain present with the weary and career-less person I am right now. Wrestling with these ruminations, I continue to lope through the October twilight of Eastern Washington. Thirsty paths are littered with splintered mica and fallen tree limbs: broken branches weathered-white like old bones scattered by ancient predators. The connection between death and change hangs heavy in the autumn air; pine and loam-scented inhalations are flavored with the tang of endings and beginnings, grief and hope, destruction and growth.

The imminent death of the season's vibrant leaves is just one example of how change is inexplicably linked to beauty. The sadness of summer passing and the hope of its return enriches our appreciation for the natural firework display. Beauty cannot occur without movement, and our attempts at preserving certain moments is a surefire way to render them stale shadows of their former grandeur. Pop culture invented plastic surgery and thick makeup to preserve fleeting semblances of beauty, but these facades can't turn my head like the ephemeral aura of an autumnal larch. Just beyond the larch, a boulder nestled halfway down the talus field is still rolling toward the valley floor; it is moving over many lifetimes while I move through only one. My route carries me past trees who writhe around rock in response to events that occurred decades earlier, and I stride past metamorphic stone that sparkles and sparks the imagination because it has been so altered there is no trace of its prior history; whose crystal striations belay a story of plot twists and chivalrous struggle that took place over eons in a dark and burning underworld. We often look to trees and mountains as symbols of stability, but my runs and climbs have shown me they are paragons for change. The world around us is never still, we just move at different speeds. To humans, the mountains move so slowly as to be inert, but to a rock, our lives must seem like brief puffs of noisy air. They say that seven "dog years" equates to one human year. How many human years are in one rock year?

I recently hiked through quartz fields nestled behind the Grand Tetons. When asked about the valley's composition, my logical hiking partner pronounced it to be "some sort of metamorphic bullshit". In other words, the rock couldn't be classified and the material was neither useful nor valuable. Yet how could this shining basin- this natural, glittering jewelry box in which I wandered- be written off as worthless? Living in my own uncomfortable space between leaving and arriving, I can't help but feel compassion and comradery for the other beings who are undergoing their own processes of destruction and creation. I am somehow different and the same, becoming and unbecoming the person I was last week and last decade, and witnessing the beautiful strangeness in others allows me to celebrate my own uniqueness. Maya Angelou reflected that "we delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty." The caterpillar must die to make room for the butterfly; the most beautiful people I know are also those who have taken on the most difficult transformations.

My autumn tours allow for introspection to reflect on how change is natural, necessary, and moreover, unavoidable. Sometimes misconstrued as a melancholic time of year, in the context of all seasons, the darkening days of Autumn signify continued hope and life. I often return to a quote by Pema Chodron in my own times of melancholy:  

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.

At the points in our lives where we are most afraid, when the reality we know is dying around us, and when we mourn the past but don't yet know the future... these are the moments when life requests our most enthusiastic participation. Change is not a part of life- it is life. Perhaps this is how the deciduous trees feel come autumn. Perhaps we can learn from the flaming trees how to gracefully let go of life's accouterments that no longer serve. We cannot wait to become a finished product, which will never happen, but only acknowledge our own and others' transformations. For, like the fluid rock and twisting trees, we all look pretty strange indeed from the events that shape us.

And beautiful, too.



Note: Opening quote by author Kathleen Winter

Image: Wing Lake in the North Cascades by Nicholas Boerner, 2015
Further reading: Copper Glance (Lake) for Field and Compass, We Were Made for Change for TWLOHA, Autumn: A Season of Paradox for On Being
Published on Root Rise Relish.