I was driving out to Canterbury just after breakfast last Sunday… it about a 45 minute drive and it’s almost all “Minnesota Freeway” – meaning, well, pretty freeway. Lots of trees and hills and birds and forestiness. Nothing at all like most metro freeway drives that are all cold asphalt and bleak blacktop like I used to travel back in California. Sometimes I’m actually distracted by the sunshine and amazing blue skies… I, like everyone else, have my beefs with Minnesota. Mostly I have something of a crush on this state and, given the opportunity, will gush effusively about its laundry list of wonderful qualities…
Right now, Minnesota looks like it’s getting ready for prom. It’s almost breathtakingly beautiful with all the trees turning vibrant colors and the geese honking overhead. The air is so crisp, I want to bite it like an apple. The wind has its own constant conversation with itself. Growing up in Arizona, the wind was a silent force that only revealed itself when dust-devils would form — when the wind became unstoppable.
In Minnesota, even the tiniest of breezes are evident in the rustling of leaves and spinning of whirligigs and swaying of branches. Sometimes, I sit on my deck and just listen to the wind find its way through the branches and leaves on our trees and it almost sounds like waves lapping on a beach and I am tickled….I’m enchanted…. probably in part because I had a childhood almost completely devoid of trees and that little girl in me still feels like there must be something magical about trees.
So, I was driving to Canterbury… and I’m watching mile after mile of the patchwork quilt of colors that are the trees lining the road… yellow, orange, brown, light green, gold, maroon, tangerine, purple, olive…. and way out, maybe a mile or more back from the road I can see one bright, amazing patch of bright red. RED! Like… like…. finding a cherry in your fruit cocktail when you are sure none are left! Like finding the one red jellybean left under the grass in your basket with all the green and black unwanted ones…
Red! How did one red tree grow there? Nothing else red for miles. Was it a mutation? One lonely seed dropped by some visiting bird?
More importantly, is this tree included in the reindeer games? Or is it ostracized by the others for its immodest beauty?
Is it the popular tree? The ring leader?
Do the other trees wear bracelets on their branches that say “WWRTD?”