Broken Can Be Beautiful.

I finally got back to the Swimming River Preserve today. The last time I was there was the day after hurricane Sandy. The kids were with me and as we arrived, we realized our normal dirt parking spot had been obstructed by a small fallen tree. The landscape had changed dramatically from it's pre-storm form. So many trees did not survive and the ones that had, had taken on a mature, beaten look. The thinning of larger trees and shifting of land gave way for acorns to make a reach for the newly opened sky.

Once tall mighty trees now lie down, not in pain but in a strange dignity. In their decay new life was already spotting the landscape. We followed vaguely familiar trails that had changed in the course of water, wind and wear. I came upon a tree with a section broken out of it.

Looking at the peeled back bark and odd crack, I felt a certain empathy. This tree did not do well in the storm and yet there was a beauty in it's passing that called to me. I was this tree. I was broken. Not in body or in spirit but in life. I've spent so much time looking at all of the personal things I had fixed that I never spent the time seeing the cracks or the peeling back of the bark that was still so obvious.

As I snapped a few shots of the tree's open wound, I thought of my own brokenness. One thing that always seemed to make me feel whole has been writing. I've been through so much in the last six months, good and bad but hadn't been writing about it. I'd been holding it in. Now kneeling down at this altar of a fallen tree, I realized I had been missing the simple outpouring of feeling I hadn't had in such a long time.

My mind wandered as we took the trail back to the car. My shutter lay closed passing all of the relatively common sites. So much land shifted and yet, so much was still recognizable. I remembered the path. I had taken enough pictures along it to reconstruct it from a flawed memory. In the boredom of the normal, the thought of the broken tree brought on an acceptance that being broken could be beautiful.