Fall's Beauty -- and What's Underneath or on the Other Side

A late summer/early fall thunderstorm is looming--a good time to be inside.  It was predicted to rain much earlier in the mountains so my hiking companion cancelled for today.  Yesterday I spent the day in the mountains driving and walking among our golden aspen leaves taking photos.  It was gloriously beautiful, even when, as you can see above, the aspens were painted against dark rolling clouds and threatening rain. 

I drove from place to place, avoiding most of the rain--and snow I could see in the distance where I had planned to hike.  On my way out of a dusty road that led to a Boulder County park where I had taken pictures of me, trying to get aspens in the background (my arms weren't long enough!), I turned into a steep road that led to "Mud Lake."  The loveliness of the grass and trees surrounding that lake were more beautiful than the photo below.

Not yet ready to leave the area so profuse with beauty, I turned onto a dirt road I had always passed by.  As I was about to decide that it was far too dusty and bumpy--as if life some days--I gasped at the red in the aspen ahead.  I so miss the red and orange fall leaves of Missouri and Tennessee, and this year I have found more reddish aspens than ever.  Here is the tree that lured me forward, and a photo I pushed through the dense forest to take.

Then I decided

to take a different

way home.  I

drove up through a canyon studded with golden aspens and back down through the burned-out forests left from last year's big Boulder County fire.  It was a contrast I hadn't planned.  I was going to cut over to another back road into the highway north of town, but either I missed the cut-off or it was the road marked "narrow and steep mountain road."  I chose not to drive my new (to me) front wheel drive car on that road since I was already on a mountain road that would become narrow and steep in places.  With the old Subaru, I wouldn't have hesitated, but I am still learning what my Hyundai will do easily.

The Sunshine Canyon road on which I drove was filled with lovely aspens and bare aspens.  I could also see the first snow falling on distant mountain tops from a couple of vantage points.  Shortly before I reached the tiny mountain town of Gold Hill, I began to see remnants of the fire.  As I started down the mountainside, its ravages were on either side--black "sticks" standing on a barren landscape.  It erased the joy of the earlier afternoon as the nature girl part of me grieved for those dead trees.  It was evening before I mused about the stark contrasts my drive had exposed.

I have been reading Richard Rohr's Falling Upward, a spiritual book about the two halves of life.  In his chapter called "The Shadowlands," Rohr talks about our shadow sides and says that if we are in the second half of life (and he also says that many never make this crossing from the first to the second half of life), we are familiar with at and have spent time with at least some of our shadow side.  He defines our shadows as "what you refuse to see about yourself, and what you do not want others to see." 

What I wanted to see in the mountains was the golden aspens, though much of the time I saw them against a dark background.  It was a bit like seeing my true self with the false self, the one I constructed to please others and make myself feel as secure as possible, always lurking in the background.  Rohr calls the experience I often have--learning about my shadow side through over reactions to remarks or behaviors of those with whom I come in contact (today, those in my non-profit volunteer world) the "golden shadow."  I'll think of the aspens, shining against the threatening clouds, as I find myself pulled back into false-self behavior.  As I say, "oh that will turn into a positive lesson," when something I say or do reminds me of my shadow self, I'll try to think of it as a "golden shadow."  And as I think of contrasts, I remember that the pure gold is inside each of us.  The outside gold, like the Aspen leaves, doesn't last. 

I do love those golden leaves.  Perhaps they resonate with that inside gold?!  I admire them even after they have fallen and haven't thought about what that might say to my soul. 

On another day, I'll say more about Rohr's Shadowlands chapter and how it speaks to me. 

Blessings --