"Red Tree Rising"

҉ Sunlight is the master of illusion around the 05 neighborhood in Fort Wayne. All four elements converge at this point; although one element, water, remains hidden behind the levy wall. The post-rainstorm air filters the setting sun to a scarlet hue. It casts shadows across the hilltop magically transforming the earth’s landscape. It gives the impression that if one continues to walk forward, she will advance down a picturesque lane lined with trees. The reality is if one tries to walk this path, she will smash face first into a wall of stone. The Army Corp. of Engineers built this levy to prevent the Maumee River from overflowing into the heart of the city.

҉ Living along the edge of a river, within a city landscape, offers the imagination footing into a variety of spirit and fairy realms. The depth to which the soul wonders is the key to finding purchase to those in-between places. The wild flowers and birds flutter about in the breeze dripping the last bits of thunder and lightening as an offering to the parched summer ground. The fiery red glow from the waning sunlight alters the vitality of the scene. It all depends on the viewers’ perspective to shade the season’s identity. The amorphous light allows a dying tree one more opportunity to pretend the loss of foliage is just the normal cycle of things rather than a slow deadening of the appendages. The fuller, livelier tree upriver joins in the charade ablaze with full fall regalia. There is hope that another glorious summer season will restore the mostly barren limbs to their former green glory.

҉ The landscape along this riverbank exemplifies Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in its perpetual conversion of energy, mass, and light. A number of trees experienced a transformation of energy either by the forces of man or mother nature. In the ten years I’ve been privy to this view, I’ve seen a wall of stoic oaks fall to the jaws of progress on this levy; I’ve also seen the dual daggers of ice and wind slice and dice their way through the treetops. Yet, the magic of these four elements converging on this one point in space remain as witnesses to this evolutionary process of time. The light of the setting sun is not the day’s dying ember, so much as it is tomorrow’s sparkling promise of the things to come. I miss the mini forest canopy created by those lost treasures and the raptors that nested in their rafters, but I look forward to watching the wild renew bits of its natural habitat from the glass and concrete jungle built by man’s hands. In between the cycle of the seasons, a door will open, and a seed will grow with a little earth, air, water, and sunlight.