Gold Leaf
Close up photo of some golden beech leaves hanging on a branch of a tree.
In the beginning, long before the earth had been dug and ravaged, this was what human beings meant when they said ‘gold leaf’. In those days, human beings were taller and more graceful, kind of like how we imagine a LOTR-type elf only with a dwarf colour palette.
In those days, collecting gold leaves was a coveted pastime by the people of Stanley Common. It was saved as a reward for those who had been the kindest and most compassionate the year before. The job was given so that the lucky gold leaf gatherer could go about finding beauty and replenishing any emotional, psychological, and spiritual well that felt dry. In this way, gold leaf gathering was a salve for the most gracious few.
At the end of the year, the community would round up all the leaves the gatherer had collected and they would arrange them into the most beautiful of designs about the forest. They would use honey to affix the leaves to the trunks and branches of the wintery trees to remind themselves of what was to come and to show the trees how true was their love. They would also spin the tiniest slithers of sunlight into a thread and then sew the leaves together into garments which glittered. At the end of winter, as spring was signalling emergence, the people of the forest would put on their gold leaf garments and have the most remarkable of balls. They would come together in a special, intricately coordinated dance, which made the whole world seem to be coated in gold.
As time passed, the people moved out of the forests and forgot the old gold leaf gathering ways. Sometimes, at winter’s end, grandparents would go into the attic and pull out the chests in which they had stored their old ballroom golden glitter gowns. They’d shake them to disperse the glittering whilst telling stories to the young folk in the hopes that one of them would be inspired enough to go out into the forest and create their own glitter gown.
One day, when grandparents had become great-great-great-great-great grandparents and the balls and gowns were forgotten, a young woman who most surely would have been a gold leaf gatherer in olden times, came across an old stored glitter gown. Not knowing precisely what precious heirloom she held within her hands, but also being a sensitive and creative type, she gently dismantled the garment and placed some of the gold leaves about the edge of a painting she had made.
Long story short, that artist went on to make a rather distinguished career for herself, decorating sculptures and statues, books and paintings, all with her great-great-great-great-great grandparents’ glitter gowns. On and on she kept with her creations until, one day, the last gold leaf turned to glitter in her hands.
From them on, the people needed to find another way to bring the light and the sparkle of the gold leaves into the towns. And because they had forgotten their history, they didn’t think to go back out into the forest to gather some more. Instead, they took some rocks they found in a mountain and beat them so thin that they shined. But nothing any human can do will ever match the glitter and the beauty of a gown made from gold leaves from a tree in the forest.