Those Falling Leaves

Leaves.

First there are just a few red-gold ones lining the path I walk each morning.

Then more.

And more.

Then comes the really worthwhile pile to shuffle through. And wafting up from the disturbance is that wonderfully acrid smell of decaying foliage. Surely that sends many of us back to the first ten years of our lives when autumn meant rolling, hiding, frolicking through piles and piles of leaves. In my own neighborhood we played hunter, my brother being said predator and we girls the deer. He sought, we hid. For hours. Pulling more leaves over our heads, digging deeper to disappear.

At some point an adult pulled the plug on our games and the leaves were raked and carted off by wheelbarrow - even by pickup truck to the field behind our house There the enormous pile was set ablaze. With never a fear of spreading fire, we played at the edges of the smoldering leaves, pretending we were peasants and had to gather sticks to keep the fire going for the night.

Now with our increasingly fragile planet, those fires are long gone. As are many of the open fields and children playing such simple, imaginative games? In the place of that wonderfully aromatic scent of burning leaves, is the smell of gasoline from the increasingly large leaf blowers in our neighborhood as "lawn systems" sweep away summer.

Still I remember the watching the darkening skies over our leaf fires as the day slipped away and hearing the punctuation of geese flying south.

Winter approached for us - and the peasants.