Meditation on Leaves

“To hear never-heard sounds,

To see never-seen colors and shapes,

To try to understand the imperceptible

Power pervading the world;

To fly and find pure ethereal substances

That are not of matter

But of that invisible soul pervading reality.

To hear another soul and to whisper to another soul;

To be a lantern in the darkness

Or an umbrella in a stormy day;

To feel much more than know.

To be the eyes of an eagle, slope of a mountain;

To be a wave understanding the influence of the moon;

To be a tree and read the memory of the leaves;

To be an insignificant pedestrian on the streets

Of crazy cities watching, watching, and watching.

To be a smile on the face of a woman

And shine in her memory

As a moment saved without planning.”

                                                                                                  - Dejan Stojanovic

“Anyone who thinks fallen leaves are dead has never watched them dancing on a windy day.”

                                                                                                  - Shira Tamir

I live in a place of leaves.  My place still retains some old growth forest, has quite a lot of second growth, and several species of trees not native to the region. Almost all of them are deciduous.  The old growth forest that still stands in my neighborhood consists of predominantly Sitka Spruce.  Closer to the streams are some Shore Pines, a sub-species of the Lodgepole Pine, but they like their feet wet and boggy. My place is on a high water table so one or two of the Shore Pines traipse up our street, finding the squelchy areas easily where they like to wiggle their toes.

There is quite a lot of Vine Maple, small but very prolific insofar as number of leaves are concerned. There are still one or two Elms, though most are gone, and a couple of Horse Chestnuts, their burred and barbed seeds littering the ground in the fall, followed by their leaves. Red Alder, Black Cottonwood, some Rowan trees, and Black Locust, all add to the cascades of leaf fall in the autumn. And Maple trees, from small-leafed Japanese maples to the leaves of Oregon Maple – which can be as big as dinner plates. Lots and lots of Maples.

They say the grandeur of trees is gone when raking leaves. That when faced with a lawn of leaves up to your knees that you quickly forget the charm of the trees from whence all this foliage came. What was once beauty and shade becomes a chore.

I love raking leaves – I love that it happens when the air is nipping-cold, when the lawnmowers have become quieted; when there is a peacefulness that accompanies the scritch, scritch of the rake in the leaves and the sniggering of birds at the feeders. I love that at times I will rake and uncover wondrous fungi and mushrooms – in every colour from white to purple, and from every size from thumb nail, to bucket-sized. They don’t appear until the leaves are there to hide their murky and covert journey to the surface of the soil. I love how I uncover the secret stashes of squirrels, little piles of nuts they had hoped to remember to find again. If a squirrel is watching while I rake he will come down from a tree when he thinks my back is turned and steal them back, indignant and a little chagrined about his dodgy wee memory.

We are not allowed to burn leaves in my place. Apparently it is environmentally toxic. Which I understand, and comply with, but it is also a sensual regret. When I was a child, the final ceremonial step in raking leaves was to set fire to them. My brother and I tended the bonfire. Long into the evening we would poke and putter about the fire, inhaling the heady smell of burning leaves.  Our faces would become smudged, our hands dirty, our clothes as thick with the smell of dry vegetation as a wool coat in a peat barn. The synthesis of low evening light, perhaps the streaking of pink and gold as the sun set, the gloom approaching on cat’s paws, and the nose-pinching smell of the bonfire, coalesced into a memory that is still so strong today in my old age that I can physically inhale it.

Leaves are not meant to be bagged up in over-priced ‘bio-degradable’ bags that line up in a row next to the garbage cans, or even worse in plastic ‘compost’ bags. Leaves are certainly not meant to be vacuumed – the full-mouthed sound of the machinery shattering the deadened air of autumn. We compost, but something is lost in the ritual

I love raking leaves. I love even, but only in a meditative mind, when I am finished and turn around and see that the breeze and the trees have conspired to re-carpet the lawn. Begin again. Begin again. Meditation on a breezy, leafy autumn day.