Have you ever noticed how leaves change their character throughout the year? For the most part they are real stay-at-homes, clinging to their parent tree like small children, eager to see the world but afraid to let go of their mother’s skirts. For months, all through the long hot days of their only summer they continue like this, faithful to the one attitude to life, loyal supporters of the system that gave them birth. Even the strongest winds fail to tempt them, they seem endlessly content to stay home and work the same old fields every day, reaping a consistent and warming crop of sunlight. Then suddenly in autumn they become braver, more adventurous.

At first it is only one or two who act, who quietly say goodbye to their habitual branch and set out to investigate the world. Then rapidly as such novel activity gains popularity they are followed by droves of new adventurers as the whole population begins to abandon their long-loved niches, and with enthusiastic impetuosity, to embrace a life of idleness and idiosyncratic vagrancy. Where before they were workaholics, now they become playful, dancing joyously in their new found freedom, leaping in gay abandon across fields and gardens. Sometimes solitarily, but often in groups, they show a liveliness and a zest for life they have not before given us even so much as a glimpse of. Some few at first, but soon many, even become macho, playing games of daring do such as “who can cross the road” or even “lets run down the middle of the road”. Thus they demonstrate both their new-found freedom and their stalwart faith in life.

In time however, their newly discovered individuality leads them on to an even greater journey. Forgetting the excitement of ebullient activity as rapidly as they first embraced it they seek out, and retire to quiet corners. Here they rest, silent and unmoving, contemplating the oneness of life and their ultimate unity with all living things through their return to the bosom of mother earth. Finally, in fulfilling their meditation dream they leave behind the skeleton of their material selves and attain complete freedom in a purely spiritual existence, living now only in our memories.

Their sparkling, vivacious Autumn dance inspires me, lifts me out of myself so that for a brief moment I become a leaf, transcendent, living entirely for the present; I am carefree, revitalised. Each leaf I realise, is in some finite way, like me, unique, despite the obvious similarities it bears to the teeming millions of it companions. Then, as I return from this brief flirtation with enlightenment to the earth and my own mundane human body I am forced to wonder, “Who ever remembers a leaf?”