I gaze out the window and watch an enormous brown oak leaf float silently to join her sisters on the ground. That’s the problem with living in a forest. Once the trees feel the first cool evening, they start their annual ritual of shutting down chlorophyl production, then send their leftover parts to the forest floor for decomposition. If only all the leaves got the message at once, and in a week or two the molting were complete. But here on our parcel of the Pinelands, the deciduous trees take their sweet time to casually litter my yard from September till December. There’s a brief window at the beginning of fall when my husband can help keep the ground tidy, but once October arrives, cranberry harvest demands all his attentions.
I wonder if it’s time for the colorful leaves to paint their amazing mosaic on our walking path at the far end of the property? Was it last year or the year before I was enraptured by the range of oranges, slivers of gold, and depth of reds spread out like a carpet for my children to discover while we explored the woods?
A tiny stream cuts through the forest where we cross over an earthen bridge above a piece of irrigation pipe. Emelyn named it “the colorful leaf place,” and collected them by handfuls to her heart’s content. I wished I could’ve perfectly preserved them for her, encasing them in glass paperweights to capture the memory of skipping through the forest in crisp autumn air, feeling awe at the profusion of colors swirling around us like God’s own confetti.
Instead, we tried making a few crayon rubbings on paper, but who knows where those’ve gotten to by now. Rather than holding onto mementos in a scrapbook, we’ve waited for the cycle to come around again to visit our magical site.
I remember such a place from my own childhood. I found a hidden waterfall in my parents’ woods formed from spring rains. A vernal pool sat under the five-foot drop, lined with mosses and ferns, just the size for a sylvan elf’s bathtub. I tried to find it again in springs to come, but had no luck. Either the landscape changed and it was gone, or my sense of direction failed me. I wished I’d had the sense to mark a trail so I wouldn’t have lost that lovely little setting. It would have been comforting to sit and read with the sounds of birds mingling with tumbling water hidden in the green of spring. I wonder if anyone else ever saw that waterfall, or if it was my personal temporary Eden.
Another leaf drifts from the bough of the oak in our backyard and prompts me to call over the railing into the loft where my children play. “Want to go take a walk and see if the colorful leaves are here yet?” I pause and listen for their feet to pound down the hardwood stairs.
We find our colorful leaves under the bluest of skies. I watch Emelyn and Alex run ahead of me toward the muddy stream bank where the widest variety of colorful leaves await, chased by our ZuZu dog who will need a bath when we get home. I’m so thankful a marked path led us here once again, and regret my earlier wish for a quicker leaf molt. I hope instead for many, many more days of falling autumn leaves.
Your Turn: Do you have a nature spot that feels like your private oasis?
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