illumination

aspen
Originally uploaded by c'estbonne

This aspen leaf made me think about backwards branching. That is, following all the many roads back to their source, rather than to their ends.

The leaf's backlit veins travel delicately to their outermost boundaries, to the edges. Layer by layer, they split off into perhaps infinitely many smaller networks, performing their work with equal purpose. But they all originate from the stronger center vein down the leaf's middle.

Each leaf also has a stem that reaches back to a branch; the leaves are their own network layer. And each branch anchors to the trunk. In the case of an aspen grove, even the trunks are just extensions of a living root system that comprises one complete organism.

And how much further back can the journey of this leaf's life be traced?

There's a time for us to expand outward, to grow and seek and stretch and find new edges to our limits. And there's also a time to follow that same journey inward, to understand the wholeness that cradles all of our pieces, and that illuminates our multitude of antics here on Earth.