That Little Voice

What is it about fall that makes me want to play in a pile of leaves, watch the smoke rise in neighborhoods as folks burn the mountain of dying greenery, and listen to the crunch of dried foliage under my feet?

I’ve never lived in a place where there was an abundance of shedding trees, or neighbors raking and burning leaves in their front lawns, but I’ve read about such places.

I had a friend tell me he spent Saturday afternoons each fall doing just that at his home in South Carolina, and I formed an image in my mind about the sounds, smells, and touch of the fall season.

Of course, the days of burning leaves in the city have long passed, and with the advent of electric leaf blowers, raking has, no doubt, become a mere memory in the minds of us ‘oldies’.

But, the dream continues especially as the bright green leaves begin to turn gold, red and brown and tumble to the ground in multi-color patterns.

There are other indications that the seasons are changing. Pecans begin to fall, apples ripen, different varieties of flowers bloom, and fake Christmas trees are suddenly lining the aisles in grocery and department stores.

And it isn’t even October! Thankfully Christmas music isn’t yet blaring, but your eye sight is accosted with Santa Claus statues, reindeer poking their red noses through branches of flocked trees, and brightly colored packages wrapped to entice the shopper to begin their Christmas list buying spree.

Oh my, have we gone crazy? We’ve not bought our Halloween costumes or decided on how we want our faces painted for the Day of the Dead celebration coming up at the end of October and the first of November. And what about Thanksgiving?

Now that I think about it, we have multiple festivities all held in the span of three months, those months we call fall. And most of them aren’t about burning leaves and rolling around in piles of crunchy fading leaves.

Now with global warming lighting the skies with raging fires and inflaming our nostrils with choking smoke, the appeal of those old days of burning leaves has waned in popularity. But as I said, these cooler and shorter days do ignite my imagination to recall scenes I’ve never actually seen.

Time is marching rapidly toward a new year, so get your leaf blower out and scatter those leaves around your neighbors’ yards. Afterall, its fall.