Orange is my Color

I am here, in Music City, the landscape freckled with oranges, yellows and reds.  Fresh from the Evergreen State, with its glacier-capped mountains and cedars large enough to drive a car through.  My head is still saturated with green, the green of moss-covered firs, ferns hanging from gorges, jade glacier ice, and teal alpine lakes.  Oft on the mountain in Fall, the bugs long gone to rest, I watch her don a cloak of beauty, reds and oranges in the undergrowth and sweeps of snow on tiny alpine trees.  It is my favorite time to be on my mountain, my spiritual home.  Now far from home, struggling to love this land, I have found joy in the brilliant weave of color Fall brings.

Orange is my color – it is happiness, warmth, energy and light.  Orange is the color of my heart, the color of song, and the color of joy. A tree gone amber or a field of tangerine bloom catches my breath, sails my soul. I honor orange with a leading role in my closet and a generous sprinkling through my home.

My heart responds with worship amidst the orange towering spires and arches of the Southwest.  I speak to my ancestors and commune with God in the land that surely, I once lived.  In this sacred space, as soon as my feet connect with the persimmon soil, I am with God.

After my first trip to this heaven, I painted my den the color of the sun hitting the red-rocked arches.  It had to be the den, the room I warm myself by the fire, gaze into while cooking, and map out our homeschooling days.  I could not bear the disconnection from my sacred land.  I wanted to feel the expansion of my soul once more, know again the feeling of being in my ancestral home. The den is my room and I painted it the orange.

The orange room became my sanctuary, the room I sought comfort.  As my marriage dissolved, as I lost a baby from another love, as I fought for breath when asthma squeezed my effort, my orange room, my sanctuary, helped me find my center, my peace and my comfort.  The orange of the arches soothed my soul and brought me back home.  Orange is my color.