“If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light.  Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears.”

— Cesare Pavese

The storm is over.  Today’s fifty-five-degree temperatures will likely melt away what remains of the snow.  The pavements are wet again where black ice ruled yesterday; and I decided to pull on my boots and take the puppy for a walk through our beloved park this morning.  Everywhere we turned we faced piles of branches, remnants of the devastating pruning of Mother Nature’s Halloween snowstorm.  My beloved magnolia tree, whose pink blossoms herald Spring for me each April, stood wounded near the large stone community center.

Some of her branches had begun to die last summer, and the workers had pruned them back.  Perhaps Mother Nature thought their job had been incomplete.  Perhaps a cold-weather pruning was just what she needed; but I won’t be certain of that until Spring comes and I watch for her blossoms to return.

Hardly a tree was left unscathed.  When winter storms arrive before the trees have relinquished their leaves, the weight of the snow is too much for them to bear.

One large section of this tree just missed my neighbor’s house, sending her scurrying for safety with her parents for fear that the next one might crash through her roof while she slept.

Here and there stood my dear friends, the trees, encircled by their fallen branches with leaves still clinging in the midst of Autumn.

As my eyes moved from pile to pile of torn tree limbs, I felt them fill with tears.  I choked back the sobs that wanted to fill the morning air and walked more briskly toward the ancient maple that had housed the bluebirds all summer long. It really is more like half a tree, and the spot where the bluebirds would sit and sing was at the blunt end of a long-broken branch that sported only two or three tiny shoots that bore any resemblance to the other half of the tree.  Afraid of what I might find on a tree that looked so vulnerable, I hurried to the other side of the park and the place where it stands.

Of all the trees I love so well, I was surprised to see that only the bluebird tree stood just as it had before the storm arrived — unscathed in all its half-treed splendor, with every branch still in place.  I gazed in amazement at its sparse but sturdy shape; and for the first time all morning, I felt encouraged.  I scanned the park once again; but this time, instead of focusing on the fallen limbs, I lifted my eyes to view the trees.  There they stood, surrounded by all that had fallen away.  The sky that occupied the now-empty spaces backlit them and showed off the strength and the splendor of the surviving parts of each tree.  By letting go of what did not serve them in the midst of the storm, they had saved their roots.  They will go on to bring us joy for another season; and as the years go by, there will be new growth to fill the places that now seem so sparse.

I thought of the storm and of the stormy times in my own life when suddenly I am pruned, against my will, of the things I thought were necessary.  I thought of the way that I have mourned the ring of branches that lie at my feet, wanting to somehow reclaim them and reattach them so that all could remain the same.  I thought of how I soon would turn my desperate feelings of loss to resignation and then acceptance, how I would feel my roots holding securely to the earth and grow to appreciate my new shape — the one that went on in spite of missing some parts I thought were permanent.  I thought of the new growth that appeared in the now-available places after my pruning made room for something new and wonderful.

Again, I turned toward the trees.  Each year they shed their Autumn beauty in preparation for the snows of winter.  I suppose they know that when the storms come it is best to be traveling light; but even when they are pruned out of season, they stand strong and tall.  When the next storm arrives, they will be ready to bear its wind and the weight of its snow.  The wind will shake them and test their roots, but a little testing often makes our roots stronger.

I returned from my walk today with a lesson from the trees.  What really matters is not what is pruned away.  What matters is how it strengthens what remains.