Oaks aren’t the only trees that don’t shed all their leaves in the fall. Another species, the American beech, also retains a lot of its pale pale brown foliage through the winter and into the following spring when new growth promptly and efficiently dismisses the old. On cold blustery days following a heavy snowfall, stray late-fallen beech leaves scuttle across the white sculpted drifts, appearing quite alone and forlorn in their journey to wherever the wind takes them. Where they are bound is anyone’s guess, but those remaining on the tree appear no less wretched and forlorn as they tremble on their tethers, the only thing keeping them above-ground for the time being.

They shiver this day in unison, their softly veined dentated ovate forms, ending in soft points, facing downward, all in the same direction, each replicating its neighbors’ movements, never missing a step, shimmy or a sway, surrendering to the force that sets them moving. It’s a sharp wind that pushes against these spectral shapes, a gale from the northwest, threatening to tear them from their former lifelines and set them into a frantic and terrible airborne motion toward the southeast.

These tenacious bits of dried vegetation share our own angst this bitter season, resigning themselves to forces beyond their control much as we must when the evening weather report is not what we’d hoped it would be. The same winds that buffet them about assail us as we plow, shovel and curse and try to make our way out from our shelters and back into the more spirited, less put-upon and less encumbered stream of life. And when the sun makes an appearance, we, like the beech leaves, welcome its touch.

They inspire, these beech and oak leaves, as well as do any other stalwart bits of leaf and twig that rise above the snow. Their secret is to not resist, never resist, or at least to know when to simply allow the cold gales their way, to wait as they wreak their havoc and then be done with it, waning as air patterns change and pressures level off. All weather events are finite, a lesson that the leaves have learned well over time.

Like ghostly shades of their former selves, the beech leaves are almost translucent now, drained of their stores of bright green chlorophyll, their pale golden-brown a final statement in a world that is currently lacking in other color. Flat, smooth and still glossy even now, they stand in stark contrast to their oak-leaf kin that hang thickly in tight curled clusters on some trees, and only intermittently as loners on others. Unlike oak leaves, whose edges curl and turn a sepia brown as the sunlight abandons them to their fates, beech leaves curl less, if at all, retaining at least their dainty shapes until forced from their branches in spring.

The American beech, with its smooth furrowless gray trunk and oval to rounded shape at maturity, can live to 300 years old. Those hereabouts are much younger, however, with many just starting out and struggling to establish themselves beneath a canopy of much larger oaks, maples, and pines. Yet, they persevere and are, as I write, budding out in anticipation of milder weather and the great bursting forth of new life which is set to occur soon, very soon now.

For are we not all, as these leaves, at the mercy of those powers that can, at any moment, topple us? Despite our fancy human trappings, we’ve not yet managed, hard as we try, to overcome many of those forces that impact the quality of our lives. Perhaps it would be best to adopt a leafier attitude, admit that, sometimes, overcoming is simply not possible, and enjoy, as the leaves so beautifully do, simply being, waiting the gray days patiently out and basking in the sun’s light on others.

— Rachel Lovejoy, a freelance writer living in Lyman, who enjoys exploring the woods of southern Maine, can be reached via email at [email protected].