We were walking through downtown Seattle’s paradoxical Freeway Park. When you stroll among the park’s lush trees, flowering shrubs and patches of green grass, you’re actually on a lid covering a concrete parking lot and the hectic traffic of Interstate 5.

Two friends and I had just toured the collection of Northwest art at the Arch Convention Center. We were savoring the experience when one of my companions picked up a leaf that had been lying on top of a concrete barrier, as if someone or some spirit had carefully placed it there.

“Look at this!” she exclaimed. “How beautiful!”

Moments earlier we’d been engaging with larger-than-life abstract paintings representing scenes of the Northwest. Now here was nature’s own abstract: exquisitely colored patterns on a six-inch leaf. Nature imitating art imitating nature. 

The design reminded me of antique maps. When they were produced centuries ago, the maps were more products of speculation than settled geography. I recall standing in a British museum, staring at a supposed map of the world, drawn around 1100 CE. It was wildly different from global maps of today but suggested a planet I’d like to visit. Imagined continents were colored in nature’s hues and sharply outlined, surrounded by pale blue seas.

I held the leaf in the palm of my hand, and considered its rust-hued archipelago floating on a multi-shaded green sea. The islands were outlined in thick black, as if one of nature’s elves had laboriously drawn their ragged shorelines with a Sharpie.

Our other companion observed that if I wanted to keep the leaf, I’d have to coat it in wax. I couldn’t imagine struggling with melted wax in my compact kitchen. Maybe, I thought, I could laminate it. I shook my head at the irony. I’m earnestly trying to reduce my use of plastics, yet here I was, considering shrouding nature’s art in that toxic substance?! Yes, I’d like to keep the leaf, but … but … but

Oh, how we battle to not let go — until we have no choice. 

I was pretty sure it was a laurel leaf, but I checked it out with the “Picture This” app on my phone. The app informed me it’s a species of magnolias, also known as “Big laurel,” and declared an alarm in bright-red letters: THIS PLANT IS SICK!

I looked around at the grove of tall, graceful magnolias. I’m no arborist, but they appear healthy. New green foliage seems to be pushing the old brown leaves onto the ground. Or maybe the old leaves are voluntarily making space for the next generation. Are the beautiful images on the dying leaves a last-gasp aria?

As captives of a death-denying culture, it’s difficult for us to see any beauty in dying. Yet much great art through the centuries has depicted exactly that. J.S. Bach’s compelling chorale, “Komm, süsser Tod,” pleads: Come, sweet death, come, blessed rest! Come lead me to peace for I am weary of the world, O come! 

Even though I recently turned eighty, I’m not ready to embrace Bach’s sentiments just yet. I’m more in league with Robert Frost whose poem “Birches” celebrates his boyhood delight in swinging on tree branches, up, up towards heaven. But, he cautions, “May no fate willfully misunderstand me … and snatch me away/ Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love …”

At least for now. 

The colored leaf lay on my table for several days, a temporary totem. Then I gently, reverently put it to rest in the compost bin. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.