The First Fall

[Julie Kenward]

I can't tell you what the first evidence of autumn is doing to me inside. I keep saying I'm going to sit down and blog about it but I don't think I've been able to form the words until now. Between the little pockets and splashes of color and the slight crispness that is just now hitting the air, I am speechless and awed by it all.

It is my 48th autumn - and yet it is my first. I've photographed hundreds of leaves over the past two years yet each one this year feels like a whole new experience. It is this camera that has stirred me up inside - I knew it would - and I am deeply transformed each and every time I carry it out into the field.

And so it begins...my first fall season with a real camera. There are weeks ahead of long walks in the woods, colors that will expode inside the boundaries of an image, and watery reflections so full of light that the naked eye can barely comprehend it.

I look back tonight and realize that depression did not kill me. Heart disease did not kill me. Lost loves and tornadoes and downed power lines have not killed me. I have survived it all - survived and thrived. I have picked up the pieces and I have walked towards the promise of another day...towards a brand new life...walked forward towards a whole new world.

I stand in awe of His creation - of His imagination - of His unending variations that comprise the universe as we know it. I stand in awe of light that dances on the broken surface of a lake, shattered like an atom split in two. I unravel at the infinite number of shades and hues that every color produces within the confines and limits of this thing we humans refer to as "nature." I stand in awe of sunsets the color of bonfires and dawns that throw rosy pink sunlight across a sky with the staggering splash of an imaginary push broom. I glance into the night and wonder - are there more leaves on the ground or more stars in the sky? Who can count? Who can dream that high?

Not I.

I am overcome. I am undone. I am unwound and unnerved and outsung. I am three years now into my second go 'round at life and I am only just a toddler, anxious to unwrap that next present and see what lies beneath the bright and shiny surface.

It is my 48th autumn and, yet, it is my first fall.

[Lance Warley]

I stand in awe too, Jules. I stand in awe of you.

This is so good, I wish it could be seen by a wide audience.

"It is my 48th autumn - and yet it is my first." That's writing. And then it keeps getting better.

Thanks for making my day.

[Julie Kenward]

Thank you, Lance. This is actually a post on my private blog that I wrote last night so a (somewhat) larger audience did get to see it. It's been easy to write over there where I am known only by a ficticious name - getting the courage to start writing with my given name has taken much longer. I so appreciate having this "little space" to get my feet wet in this way.

[Nicki Gwynn Jones]

Jules, I am honoured to have read this - truthful, moving, life-affirming and very courageous.
With love,
Nicki

[Sharna Lee]

Jules,
This was so moving for me. Very inspirational for someone who used to write poetry herself. I kind of lost that part of me somewhere. Today your words invoked a spark in me that I thought gone for good. Thanks. :D

Sharna

[Julie Kenward]

Nicki, thank you...that means so much to me coming from you.

Sharna, I know exactly what you mean. I locked the key to my words and photos for over two decades, thinking they were never good enough - that I would never be good enough. Somehow, God unlocked that door for me three years ago and I have been pressing myself to grow beyond what I had once "settled" to become. I hope that happens to you, as well.