There aren’t a whole lot of leaves in a city. There are some, brown ones and red ones and yellow ones that fall from planted trees and onto stained sidewalks. Those leaves blow down city roads and alleys, and they mix with trash and they find their way into gutters and into the vents that let air into and out of the subways. Some leaves and the trash end up ground under foot traffic, so much traffic from so many people walking quickly in this direction or that one, and at the end of the season when the leaves fall the few that didn’t end up in a gutter or falling through a vent get swept up and thrown away. What a waste.
No matter how weak an individual person, or leaf, is, there is always strength in numbers. Leaves in cities don’t stand a chance to become anything more than a momentary star on a branch before falling to the floor of that concrete jungle. There’s no way to celebrate a leaf that fell in a city, because people have no time to celebrate anything there. They rush from one building to another, or they wander, staring up at the buildings, or others sit, on a bucket or against the post of a stoplight, shaking a cup or a hat so that someone might put something of value into it. No one ever thinks to put leaves in that cup or into that hat, because if you did that I don’t think anyone would understand and they most certainly wouldn’t appreciate it. But I appreciate leaves. Individually they’re fine, but a whole bunch of them is like a whole bunch of anything. Even whole bunches of garbage are valuable, just ask Waste Management.
In November, we can do lots of things. We can sit inside and think about football, or worry about taxes, or think about the money we have or the money we used to have or the money that we’re pretty sure we’ll never have. In October, leaves are on trees and some are on the ground, but mostly they’re up on branches, showing off and gripping to the branch just as tight as they possibly can. They’re smug. In November, the fall, and gravity, have won. Leaves are down. Landscapes are painted in sepia, which is pretty enough for me even without the bright oranges or fiery reds. Dull brown and gray and fading green is fine by me, and it must be by you, because mostly everyone paints the inside of their home the colors of November. HGTV paints rooms the color of October, but HGTV is produced and watched mostly by crazy people.
The best thing about November at the lake is that it’s nothing like November in the city. In the city, all traces of fall are cleaned up as quickly as possible, to make way for winter and Christmas and shopping. At the lake, we let fall be fall. We don’t need to pick it up like we’re cleaning off the table after a big family dinner, we just let the dishes lie where they were, and we let the sink fill with dirty pots and then we sit on the couch for a while until we fall asleep. We can clean up tomorrow. For now, there are leaves around, big piles of them and entire lawns filled with them. Until those leaves are covered in snow, it will be fall, and right now it’s not the end of fall or the beginning of fall, it’s just fall. There’s really no reason to rush through it.
I was never a kid in the city. I never had Saturday mornings where my treat was a walk down some city street to some neighborhood breakfast place. I spent November Saturdays surrounded by leaves, big, huge piles of leaves. Brown ones and yellow ones, wet ones that clung together like a giant mound of scalloped potatoes and dry ones that fluffed up and made us rake with the wind and never into it. We’d rake and we’d rake, and my dad would push a huge blower across a lawn and we’d rake just in front of that mighty puff of engineered air. We’d end up with massive piles of leaves and just a few blue tarps. The leaves in piles were never where they were supposed to be, that’s why we needed the tarps. I hated tarps then because they had to be pulled across lawns and the twisted ends hurt my hands and pinched by fingers. Today I hate tarps because they cover cars in driveways and boats behind sheds, and it’s because I hate tarps that I must hate Michigan. They love tarps there.
This weekend, come up and find some leaves. Rake up a pile of them. Kick them with your feet and once the pile is big enough let your kids jump in them. They’ll like that. Once the kids are through, and the surroundings are secured, light those leaves on fire. Your neighbors might complain for a while, but once their anger fades they’ll realize that nothing says fall like a big old pile of leaves, and nothing smells more like fall than that same pile smoldering into a cold November night.