Leaf Dancing

“When it nears the line in the middle of the road, it stops. It starts to spin—vertically, on its sturdy stem—so slowly at first that I can’t recognize what is happening. But there is no mistaking how vertical it is, and that it could not maintain this position at all if it were not twirling, even in the gauzy, distracted way of a gamine princess.”—Anita Sullivan

The Highest Cauldron 

By Anita Sullivan

EUGENE Oregon—(Weekly Hubris)—10/5/2015—Here is what I see. An asphalt road winding uphill ahead of me, dappled by shadows from late summer trees. As I lean into a long right-hand curve, a large yellow leaf, probably a Bigleaf Maple, skitters out from the left side of the road directly into my path, like a pedestrian crossing without looking both ways for traffic. When it nears the line in the middle of the road, it stops. It starts to spin—vertically, on its sturdy stem—so slowly at first that I can’t recognize what is happening. But there is no mistaking how vertical it is, and that it could not maintain this position at all if it were not twirling, even in the gauzy, distracted way of a gamine princess.

There is no wind. Quickly, I check the trees on either side, the tall grasses beside the road as well. They are motionless. The leaf is dancing for some other reason. It wobbles, too or, rather, begins to tip, but then with a rush of something like desperate ecstasy, it rights itself for that last three full seconds of fandango panache directly in front of the oncoming metal bumper that will soon destroy it. . . .

I blink. I slow to a crawl while the leaf completes its last pirouette, falls over, and resumes a horizontal position on the pavement. Surely I have not just witnessed a blatant flouting of certain of the smaller laws of biology and physics! There may be no general breeze in the vicinity, but I obviously failed to discern the maverick eddy prowling along the ground, small enough to have lifted a single leaf and make it into a temporary puppet clown. Right?

But no, I’ve seen this happen before and, this time, the boldness and clarity of the leaf’s actions finally convince me. That silly, fragile, skittish bit of flotsam out there is carrying on a totally atypical act of frivolity—laughter in pure form.

I don’t know if leaves need to break away and dance from time to time, but they do it nonetheless. And could these sometime surreptitious botanical outbursts be simply another example of Nature’s normal tendency to redundancy, experimentation, excess? Or are the leaves actually getting away with something unauthorized? Either way is fine with me.

To order Anita Sullivan’s book, Ikaria: A Love Odyssey on a Greek Island, click on the book cover below.