Spruce trees fill the front yard of my small-town home. Standing dozens of feet tall, they tower over the speckles of bushes and hedges growing close to the ground, but in communion with neighbouring trees who, too, extend tall and looming into the sky. One is blue, the others ‘normal’, or so I’m told. I can see tones of gray-blue in the one they call the ‘blue’ spruce, and perhaps green holds a more dominant position in the color palate of the others.

Regardless of their colours, they grow, they behave, they act in similar ways, as how the world would expect members of a tree family to be. Here, in the spring, once the snow melts away, the ground stands covered in cones and needles. Not that the snow had much opportunity to stand in its own self-assurance, for the needles see to it that the snow quickly and silently melts away wherever they choose to fall, and land. Sneaky are these trees. The cones and needles dirtied the snow like clumps of dirt and sprays of sand all winter long, that is, until they unleashed their power and spell-casted the snow to disappear, almost overnight.

I wonder if I could make something disappear overnight.

Out into the yard I go, nowhere to step but on cones and needles. I cannot see a single blade of grass left free to stand alone. For hours I rake, gathering into piles the cones and needles and clumps of dead grass that could not withstand the ruthlessness of the falling all around them.

The trees know how to let go of what they no longer need. How to let go of what no longer serves them. All winter they engaged in this process, including seasons before, though more subtly, dropping useless cones and needles to the ground. The trees do not need them any longer; why would they let them go otherwise? I assume they let them go for practical purposes, and not based on emotionality. I assume trees to be straightforward beings.  

For hours I rake, wondering of the lives of each cone and needle slowly gathering in amongst the prongs of the rake and joining together in a pile. The trees seem to have fully embraced the act of letting go. Glancing up, dozens of feet above me to the very tops of the trees and into the piercing white light of the sun, I see more cones still, hanging on to the branches by their tips. Eventually, they will join others on the ground. For now, they keep hanging on.  

The piles grow larger and larger behind my rake, with collections scattered across the lawn. I appreciate just how much new space the trees have created for themselves. I imagine how free they must feel, to sense this space for new opportunities, for new growth.

Glancing up once more to where clusters of cones remain huddled together, I see how those branches droop heavily; lower than the others with no cones to be seen. Bending under the weight of holding on, the tree assumes responsibility for what the cones cannot carry. The cones do not care, for they do not have to hold up their own weight. But the tree does, and continues to do so, sporadically up the tree trunk the farther my eyes travel.

As my eyes travel, I see freedom, I see weightlessness, I see excitement; I see space for the future in the branches swaying with ease. I see heaviness, I see crowdedness, I see comfort in familiarity; I see the past weighing down the present in those branches encumbered by cones.

I see the same, in me.

I see the spaces in my body where I hang on to that which I believe I cannot live without. The memories that pull me back into my past and hold me hostage there. The people I used to know, the people who made me who I am. The people I used to be. The could-haves, the would-haves, and oh, the should-haves. Opportunities lost, chances never taken, words never said aloud to those who needed to hear them most. Voices echoing in my head, telling me what to do; voices that are not my own. Expectations and wishes, pressures and dreams that remain in the same place in which they were born, static. 

I also see the spaces in my body where I have, slowly, made space by letting go. I feel the calmness, the weightlessness, the joy in my heart of being at home raking cones and needles on a Thursday morning. I see images of people I have left behind so I could move onward. I see the moments where I chose to dance to the beat of my own heart when people told me I would be best to dance to music they have deemed to be safe and familiar. I see and hear the voices, and the narratives I have committed to re-write and re-record to better suit my ever-evolving nature. I see the constant of change, the necessity of change, and the beauty and demanding presence of uncertainty.

If I were to let go of the cones frantically hanging on to me, digging in their needles tight and strong, I wonder how many would fall. I wonder what would happen to them, once they hit the ground.

I wonder who I could become.