First Today, Then Tomorrow

I’m fortunate to live in this densely wooded neighborhood. I love having trees around our house. Beyond the benefits of their shade and beauty, there’s something about the sheer size of these living things that is both solid and real, a comfort in the way they’re rooted, anchored to the spinning earth. I even take pride when I pass the first house we owned and take note of the growth and health of the trees I planted there. After nearly 20 years, they’re off to a good start.

But these trees, the oaks and maples of my current home, are mature. The oaks are giants, towering high above the home. And while the maples drop their leaves quickly at the first hint of frost, these oaks are miserly, keeping some well into the winter, brown and desiccated.

Everyone has their own favorite season. Spring for hope and renewal, summer for warm recreation, winter for silence and pondering long thoughts. For me it is the fall, the time of harvest. But I have no garden or farm, other than the three pots of herbs in my kitchen window, so I consider the leaves my crop and I their farmer. I’ve often grumbled over the chore of raking, but I’ve come to think of it as something more than merely a task. It may be my early life on a farm and the generations that came before me, farmers all.  I now think of collecting the leaves as my harvest. The time just before and after Halloween was when we were in the fields for as long as the light held. Sometimes I’d ride in the combine with my father thru the soy beans and corn, often with snow swirling around the elevated glass cage. And I think back on that as I work with my current farming implements: the electric blower, a broad rake, and an old blue tarpaulin.

These leaves are not garbage, not something that’s thrown away. They are the thin engines from these massive living things. The squirrels and I are their caretakers. The nut farmers are particularly fat this fall and busy still with their own harvest. I’m left with the repeated cycle of concentrating the fallen leaves into great mounds, then filling the battered blue tarp so they can be hauled to the curb where they’ll be collected and processed into mulch.

I and the other leaf farmers in my neighborhood take pride in our work. They, perhaps, in clearing their property and in viewing an orderly lawn. For me it is in the work itself. The scratching rhythm of the rake. The coolness of the breeze thru my denim coat. The physicality and repeated motion. The time to think without distraction. Or not to think, simply to do. The momentary completion of a task that never ends.

The ground is covered now and ready for another pass with the rake. And the old oak in the back is still fully clad, still gold and brown, while all the others around it are bare to the late autumn sun. The rake calls me away from this keyboard. There’s time yet before full winter to return to the fields surrounding our house and gather in the harvest once again.