Cedars

I keep brushing yellow cedar needles off everything. The deck. The windshield of my car. My sweater sleeves, my jeans. Finding cedar needles sprinkled in my hair, like confetti leftovers from a ticker tape parade.

Except this parade isn’t marching bands and homecoming queens or valiant soldiers marching home from victory. This parade has no floats or cheerleaders or drum majors proudly leading the way.

This parade is the passage of Time. I am well and truly retired now, having given up the last of my gainful employment and usefulness as a children’s choir conductor at church. Twenty-seven years have passed, hundreds of little voices piping along merrily, sometimes even in tune, now grown and gone. The hugs and tears, gone too. Only the memories of them in the thousands, a flurry of cedar needles floating dancing in the wind to finally rest in the dark, loamy forest floor.

Little shiny slivers of memory, tumbling over each other, wafting gently everywhere I go. Hiding and peeking, gathering in nooks and crannies, these shy wild things. They are so small, so fragile, and so easily broken into small pieces.

Do the cedars mourn? Are they remembering spring, still full of tender jade needles sparkling with morning dew and silvered in midday showers? Do they sigh and recall when their branches were noisy with nests of sparrows and jays? When their heavy emerald arms stretched high into a brilliant azure dome? Do they remember the still, heavy heart of a July afternoon when gray squirrels pancaked themselves out on the railings, flat as thumbtacks?

I put all my choral books away. I boxed up the hand-drawn greeting cards, the photographs, the papers sticky with red paper hearts glued on with Elmer’s. I found recordings of all the songs I remembered that I had taught and sent them to the new director with my blessings. I take walks. My memories softly drift along with me, whispering.

When cedars drop those golden needles by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, are they happy, letting go of what has been? Are they just tired of carrying the weight?

Or are they spreading themselves out even further into the world, needle by needle, underfoot and wind borne? Are they ancient farmers readying the soil for a distant future harvest?

Maybe something in between.

Maybe both.

It’s good to be in a new chapter of my old life, I tell myself. And that’s true. To look at something new is a gift not everyone gets. To let go gratefully for what has been, and maybe to still spread something of myself further into the world. But I’m still looking back sometimes. Still stopping to listen, in case something back there wants me to wait just a moment longer. Am I truly content for what is past? Am I longing for one more summer when the needles are still green?

Yes. And yes.

Needles I’m brushing away, sweeping off, shaking out of my clothes, maybe I should be collecting you into holy bundles. Maybe I should gather you like grain, to put into a safe place until I need you for nourishment, having laid you out on the threshing floor of my mind. Maybe there is more to glean?

After all, nothing is wasted, not even the chaff. Everything, everything returns to its beginnings, to be savored, then lost, forgotten, decayed, and only then, when it is absolutely nothing of what it once was, miraculously taken up by something living, returning to life once again.

I gather a handful of cedar needles in my hand, gazing at them a bit. I roll them gently between my fingers. I put my ear to them to listen. I feel silly. I am about to throw them away, but at the last moment, I smell them.

They gift me with a warm, spicy scent that immediately transports me. Suddenly, I am in my dusty hiking boots, squinting against a dazzling autumn sky, resting my eyes in the deep purples of the mountains across the valley, up there on the ridge. Remembering my sore knee, the thirst, the wonderful coldness of the water bottle. The weight of my pack, dampness between my shoulders. The wind tangling my hair and whistling in the trees. The cedar trees.

I haven’t thought of that hike in over thirty years. Probably more.

Time marches on. Memories fade. Summers disappear, and needles fall.

A handful of cedar needles reminds me that the path has been wonderfully adventurous, and the journey not yet over. It’s a long hike, a wandering into places that are bright, shadowed, miraculous, frightening, and never completely tamed. A hike right through the secret middle of the heart, headed into unknowns that are the only true direction home.

The needles are there every year, for remembering. For savoring, for looking ahead and letting go. I’m grateful for that.

Little cedar needles scattered along the path, golden companions on the way towards horizons yet to come.