Art in the Woods

Witch hazel is in bloom. I just saw it as I walked my dogs along the wood’s edge and my heart leapt as it does every fall. Witch hazel blossoms are easy to miss. They are small tufts – more like bits of yellow thread than flower petals – attached up and down the dark limbs of this under-story bush.

You need to be up close to appreciate the subtle witch hazel blooms. They appear just as the color bullies of the woods are at their strongest – maple, black cherry, sumac, beech and ash - each elbowing for attention. Those are too easy. You can appreciate their color with a drive-by, even from a tour bus window with people yakking in your ear and someone on a speaker explaining temperatures and geographic history (an occasional joke thrown in.) In a week or two, after a heavy rain or wind, their fifteen minutes of fame will be over for another year and the trees will be left empty handed. Witch hazel blooms will remain until about Thanksgiving. It’s not uncommon to see them holding up through a light snowfall or locked in a glaze of ice along their parent stems.

I remember finding our hillside of witch hazel. It was our first year on this property. We had moved into the house in early winter; I had open-heart surgery ten months later. I was taking my first post-operative walk outdoors, alone, wondering how my life would change and mostly, what was I spared to do? Even more disturbing, what if I never found my life’s grand purpose? That’s when I saw the witch hazel and I wanted to tell everybody about it – no joking.

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Debra Audet’s memorial service was held Saturday in a grand gothic cathedral on East Avenue. Her friends and family spoke eloquently about her life, her gifts and the meaningfulness of her life in theirs. It was a fitting tribute.

You can tell a lot about a woman from her haircut and humor. Debra was class all the way – style that never goes out of fashion, tastes that transcend fad. Her laugh lifted the very air around her and she intuitively and magnetically attracted an army of people like herself: talented, bright, quick to savor life.

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Here’s a photograph of a garden “folly” in a tiny city backyard in Davidson, North Carolina. I have christened it “the cathedral” and somehow – in my mind’s maize – the witch hazel, Debra’s life and the garden cathedral all tell a similar story.