What the Leaves Know
For all kinds of reasons, or no reason at all, I’m unusually drawn to autumn’s bounty this year, in the form of dry or damp, colorful or nondescript leaves at my feet.
They’re everywhere. And I can’t take my eyes off of them.
I’ll need a good chiropractor to straighten the near-permanent curve in my neck, made so by the perpetual head-bowed position as my eyes rake the ground for these once-a-year treasures. As a former antique dealer, I know how to collect things and I’m not sure the switch ever turned off completely (see “Breaking Up With Stuff”, July 8, 2019), but in the category of Natural Things That Have Fallen to the Ground, I’m bordering on an obsession. Acorns, twigs, hickory nuts, empty and discarded black walnut shells from last year…but I leave the dropped buckeyes alone in the driveway. This year’s harvest is meager compared to years past, and I want to give the squirrels a fighting chance to make it through the winter. If you’ve ever peeled the blond, somewhat spiky and foam-like covering from a freshly-fallen buckeye nut to reveal the mahogany-colored jewel within, you know the importance of keeping that magic going year upon year. Best not to be greedy in our gathering.
This morning, as I rounded the corner on the last leg of my walk and entered the inner sanctum that is the meadow-woods, I watched from a distance as a black walnut tree on the path randomly (or not? I may never know) dropped one of its ovate yellow-tan leaves and some unseen pocket of air wafted it gently to rest atop a flat pile of others, now brown and wet with morning damp. It fell silently, solitary and brave. Has anyone ever contemplated the sound of a leaf falling in the forest, if no one is there to witness or cup an ear to catch its landing? For all that one little leaf knew, I didn’t exist at all. I thanked the meadow-woods for its quiet and stepped forward, my boots slooshing through the wet carpet of fellow mulberry, ash, and sassafras leaves, a few of them now plastered to the toes of those boots, stowaways looking for new adventures down the path.
I don’t want to overthink this, but an intuition deep within keeps bobbing to the surface asking for a moment of my mind’s time. Admittedly, I’m not that good at letting go. Goodbyes are high on my list of what I wish I could sidestep, but I’ve gathered them just the same, going on five or more decades now. You’d think by sheer volume and repetition alone I’d at least be approaching some level of Farewell Mastery. But no. Partings and movings-on still leave behind a wide range of searing scars and wincing scrapes; I lean heavily on the grace of new life, another Spring, and the endless gifts of a creative spirit to help me pick up and continue. Most days I do just fine, until I remember that I can’t call Mom and Dad to tell them about my day or hear about theirs. But this year, I stoop to get a closer look at the dying, the left-behind outer coverings or attachments of the once-living. I look up and in every direction, colorful end-of-life all around me. It’s making me go all quiet and introspective. A tree, any tree, dropping its leaves one or seven at a time, offers both wisdom and comfort. I sit upon her roots, listening for what I need to hear.
Patrick and I have come to understand and accept that something called us to this place of woods and wildness twenty-plus years ago, and the lessons are thick and rich each season. But I don’t recall paying attention to the comings and goings (mostly goings) in my life as much as I have these past several months. There’s an urgency lately to be more mindful than ever before, to notice and cherish and hold close to my heart everything and everyone that has knitted themselves into our lives. It may be a cosmic coincidental overlapping of an untamed global pandemic mixed with a turbulent election year that also happens to be taking place at this point in my developmental trajectory—I get that. Pluck any one of those elements from the others and it would be enough to make anyone seek out the company of a tall and patient cottonwood, its branches soaring 100 feet upward. Surely something that tall (and still here) must know something about life that I don’t.
But what is it about the leaves at their feet, dying and on their way to becoming next year’s compost, that captivates me so? The variety of colors alone holds my gaze and moves me forward seeking the next one that will be even more brilliant, more gasp-worthy (I hope Patrick doesn’t expect me to get any outdoor chores done quickly these next few weeks. It takes me fifteen minutes just to walk from the back door to the chicken coop a mere ten yards away to gather the day’s egg). I consider the possibility that dying leaves contain an element of beauty and poetic comfort while the tree still stands, naked and vulnerable and waiting for Spring. That birds and raccoons and humans receive the shade of a silver maple in the summer and marvel at the architecture of its leafless bones in winter, that season when we’re all in this together as the north winds blow away everything that no longer matters. As my thoughts travel such a bittersweet and balanced path, I find it uncharacteristically reassuring. Someday, I’ll shed colorful leaves of my own, in the form of stories and a modest collection of treasured objects that perhaps the young ones in my life will also cherish.
In the meantime, the child that I still am walks playfully beneath the swaying arms of these gentle giants and I gather their colorful fallen clothing, rationalizing that the red on this one is different than the reddish-orange on that one so I simply must have both. My growing leaf collection is the book I study in this autumn’s classroom, and for some reason this year, I read every word on the page.
(The mask in the photo was a birthday gift from Patrick, made by Rebecca Wentworth-Kuhn. Others she’s made are for sale at Old Mr. Bailiwick’s in Mt Vernon, Ohio.)
