Photo credit, Craig Brandt
Without snow
Yellow leaves
Unnoticed
“On Monday, Feb 5, 2019, the Magnetic Model was, again, officially updated and the location of the Earth’s north pole was changed.”1
A week earlier, a small, wet circle, a pipe leak, visible on the earth from my kitchen window, had become larger, and that day the drain in the shower room floor overflowed. As a result, its outflow pipe was dug up and replaced, and the soak pit it led to rebuilt. During this same week, the kitchen bottle traps under the sink had became blocked and caused that floor to flood, several times. The traps and connecting pipes were cleared, and the soak pit they led to rebuilt. That week, the washing repairman didn’t respond to my calls made because water in the spin cycle was repeatedly flooding the utility room floor. Meanwhile, I examined my emotions. Was there a personal situation in which I was becoming over-emotional? No. So, slightly grudgingly—I accepted that while I didn’t understand, it was good to have the work done, and eventually I heard from the repairman.
One day at the end of my week, I was speaking with a landscape Trust worker who told me that the earth’s axis had shifted a week ago. I was surprised to learn this; I hadn’t heard. Later, a question began to form, “Had my axis shifted along with that of the earth?”
Months later, I saw Craig’s photograph of yellow leaves on dimpled snow. The leaves were my metaphor: their former attachment to a branch signified my thoughts, emotions, and behaviors before the shift in the earth’s axis. Now those patterns and routines in me were like the leaves—ended. The leaves would dissolve in snow and integrate in permanence within the earth. I have experienced more change that continues up to this writing. For Brandt, the yellow leaves on snow had caught a photographer’s eye—when he saw a story.
My realization is, “To be observant may awaken more than paused moments for one of nature’s surprises; they may bring a leap of thought about oneself.”
1. Also called the shifting of the earth’s axis. “The geomagnetic field, simply known as the Earth’s
magnetic field, is one that extends from Earth to space . . . . The North Pole is in the Northern
Hemisphere while the South Pole lies on the opposite side in the Southern Hemisphere, and it is
between these poles that a magnetic field, by electric currents, is generated. https://www.evolving-science.com/environment/north-pole-shift-00927