I was in Vermont, walking on a trail that looped around a lake. The lake was a slate grey, reflecting and deepening the color of the sky above, and surrounding the lake were trees. Though it was overcast, the sky was bright in that flat, diffused way that wonderfully illuminates everything under it. It was early October, and the foliage was in full color. Under that sky, the leaves were red like rubies, stop signs, bows in girls hair, orange as fire, bright meringue yellow. Walking along the path, there would be a stretch where I was submerged in birch, entirely surrounded by thin light trunks, yellow pedals raining down on me, and then a few paces later, oak trees would dominate and I’d walk with flat feet, trying not to slip on the damp floor of fallen crimson leaves.
On my walk, admiring the world of the trees that surrounded me, I realized that I could never create anything as perfect as a single leaf. None of us ever could. One could dedicate their entire creative or scientific career to exploring the nuances of the leaf—drawing its cells, explaining how it grows and transforms light into fuel, documenting the ways it moves in the wind, the ways it changes colors with the seasons, its feel, its scent when it finally drops off its tree and begins to decompose into the earth—and in the final task of creating something similar, they would fail dramatically.
Accepting that I cannot create the leaves, I turn to them as a source of magnificent inspiration. I hope to create something that is intricate despite its simple appearance. I hope to create something both functional and beautiful, that glows in the sunlight and dances in the wind, something with precise symmetry and gentle, organic curves, something that contributes to a purpose greater than itself.