To me, the grace of human dance is a form of magic. How can anyone move with a lightness that nearly transcends gravity? I’m entranced by those for whom dance is as natural as breathing. I’m in awe of their pure physical flow.
Yet, why do I think of dancers while I’m sitting still and alone, in the forest? Because in my stillness, I’m watching other dancers—ones engaged in their annual dance of letting go.
Every year, an autumn moment arrives when enough maple leaves are falling that I’m able to sit and actively watch. Given a breezy dry day, I relax into an outdoor recliner in the grove west of my house. I tilt back and look upwards. I watch each leaf that lets go in the wind, intently following its personal path to the ground. I float with it, until it achieves stillness too.
I celebrate how each leaf uniquely dances into oneness with the earth. This one traces an invisible spiral, now widening, now narrowing, until it touches down in silence. That one tumbles in hectic chaos, appearing out of control. Another one seems to have mastered flight, despite never having done it before. It circles and soars, almost not falling at all, before finally accepting the grace of gravity and touching gently down. Leaf after leaf after leaf fall uniquely. It’s as natural as breathing too. I’m in awe of physical flow once more.
Walking in the grove again the next morning, I discover that one leaf has alighted on a silver shop mirror I’ve inverted and placed between trees, as a reminder to pause to look up. Another has attached itself to the side of a towering fir, just below the ancient Lao Tzu quote I’ve hung upon its trunk: “The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”
In the reflection of leaves and landings, I see we’re all part of a pattern that forms on time’s forest floor. Our individual lives, as individual leaves, become part of an artistic mosaic. Our lives merge into a greater pattern, beyond our personal plans. This too seems a form of dancing magic to me. It’s a greater plan beyond plan, expressed in the ongoing art of lives and leaf dancers.
It’s a patient expression. It took a few thousand years after Lao Tzu’s life, for that leaf to land beside his quote. When we too someday land on the earth and integrate, it’ll be another beautiful continuance, not an ending. Lives and leaves will still be landing, a few thousand new years from now.
In this precious present moment, a scurrying squirrel above me looses a leaf that wouldn’t have quite been ready to fall. The squirrel scolds me for my presence. I scold it back, because I belong here too. Even our conflict is a dance within a greater pattern.
Knowing the pattern is beyond us only heightens my appreciation of it. Not knowing how many more days I'll be fortunate enough to see only deepens my celebration of this one.
We’re all dancers, no matter how chaotic it may seem when we’re tumbling and falling. We’ll join in stillness, in time, nurturing the earth with both our being and our passing. The cycles renew, and we’re a part of that miracle and magic, along a living circle that appears to never end.