Sycamores are one of my favorite trees. We had them at a family cabin in the mountains overlooking the Los Angeles basin where I was born. Two of my homes as an adult have had sycamores. The mottled bark is wonderful to look at. The gangly limbs create odd shapes. The leaves are massive and plentiful.
They can be messy, though. Brittle from fast growth. And those massive leaves create a massive mess when they fall. As the enduring rains of September have come to an end, the sycamores have been the first to start dropping leaves as we head into the fall. I'm not sure why, but there seems to be lots more leaves this year. We have a sycamore at the end of our street and the gutters are full of leaves as the dogs and I walk past. The neighborhood to the north has a couple of streets lined with them and already the tarmac is coated with brown.
I think the leaves just got tired of all the rain, tired of holding out for a longer stretch into fall. All that pounding rain on those wide surfaces. Or...I wonder...were they making room for new growth? Sycamore roots have an amazing capacity to suck in moisture, so maybe the old leaves are yielding their perch for the new generation. As I age and find my walking pace slow, I think about my destiny and the impact my life might have on the next generation. I have little control over how things will shake out when my time comes to leave the tree of life and float to my final destination. But I can savor every moment in the meantime, grateful for it, seeking the goodly and godly, rather than dwelling on the decay. The sycamores, even leafless, are silent sentinels reminding me to seek the Divine in the gnarly details of the life just before my feet, rather than looking too far ahead to the unknowns in the distance.
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