fallen hickory leaf

fallen hickory leaf

scarred by insects and fungus,

yellow turning brown

Nearing the autumn equinox, warm days, cool nights. Leaves already starting to fall. Old warriors, they have endured the challenges of frost and wind, bearing the scars of battle against insects and fungus. Now they return home to the earth that nourished their birth and growth, adding to the food supply for next year's leaves.

rain wet window holds

rain wet window holds

red maple leaves, reflection

of a bare black tree

Cold autumn rain, the kind that makes you hurry to get home. As I rush along the rain-slick street, a mile-long coal train trundling east blocks my way. Without slowing down, I detour to the railroad underpass, then turn back on a different street. What does stop me is a white van, festooned with orange and yellow maple leaves. It's not blocking my way, but I pull over anyway, to stare at the spectacle of the fallen leaves, arrested in their descent by the same rain that blew them down. From the dark side window, the reflection of a "boo tree" stares back at me, its bare black limbs reaching out as if to recapture its bright treasures.
          Without the coal train I would not have taken a different route home. Without the rain the autumn leaves would have simply fallen to the ground. And without a sense of wonder I would not have stopped to marvel at the beauty of dead leaves and be surprised by a dark reflection.

on the deeply furrowed

on the deeply furrowed

bark of a sassafras tree

a face stares back at me

          The day after Labor Day, we're making our annual pilgrimage to the Missouri Ozarks, a pilgrimage that sends me back in time as well as placing me intensely in the present. 
          Crossing the footbridge to our campsite at Pulltite Campgrounds, I find the fallen leaves of sassafras scattered on the bare ground. If you didn't know, you might think these leaves came from different trees. Some are pointed ovals, others have three "fingers" or lobes, and some look like mittens, both right- and left-handed, with one lobe for the thumb. Why they grow this way on one tree is one of the marvelous mysteries of nature.
          In their autumn raiment each leaf is an abstract painting in splashes of green, gold, red and brown, interspersed with dark gray concentric circles like the growth rings of trees. I look around for the source of all these cast offs and find a tall tree, still bearing some green leaves, growing along the little creek that runs under the bridge and into the Current River.
          Picking up a red mitten, I press it to my nose. Ah, that sweet scent takes me back to my childhood. My grandmother used sassafras oil as a fragrance for homemade soap. And every year my grandfather dug up roots from trees on their Southern Illinois farm to make sassafras tea. He said the reddish-brown concoction was good for anything that ails you. Even after I went off to college, he would send me a package of the curled bark of the dried roots so I could steep my own tea. And of course, real root beer was always flavored with safrole, the essential oil from steam distilled sassafras roots. (Yes, I know, safrole oil is no longer legal in the US.)
          My older sister, when she lived in Louisiana, introduced us to gumbo filé, gumbo made with a powder of dried sassafras leaves, a spicy herb that made its way into Creole cuisine from Native American tribes. In addition to the culinary use of sassafras, Native Americans also used sassafras medicinally, as the oil in all parts of the tree has antiseptic and analgesic properties. 
          The oil also makes a good insect repellent, and since we're besieged by mosquitoes this close to the river I rub some of the redolent leaves on my bare skin. Then I gather a handful of the leaves, which will make excellent fire starters.

on a golden pond

on a golden pond

pink and white water lilies

float among round green pads

How Jack planted water lilies in the pond across the road, I do not know. I imagine him diving bottom up like a duck and carefully tucking the roots into the soft mud. Every year the lilies send up pale umbilical stems from their muddy womb. When the ovoid buds breach the surface of the water, they unfold into a fanfare of pristine pink and white petals floating among round green pads. 
          Jack left us in June and now Toni lives alone by the little water lily pond. In September we had a memorial for Jack in the midst of an especially long Indian Summer, replete with a festival of gold and copper leaves. Two water lilies -- one white, one pink -- continued to bloom among leaves like verdigris medallions strewn on molten gold, a veritable Autumn Monet. 
          Today, a cold, wet, windy front moved in, dropping the temperatures from summer to winter in a few hours. The last two lily blossoms are gone, though the green pads still float among brown oak leaves on the rain-dented surface, maintaining a tenuous connection between the dark mud and the gray light.

ghostly silhouettes

ghostly silhouettes

after rain and wind, dark leaf

stains on bare pavement

Two solid days and nights of much-needed rain, accompanied by stiff wind that rips the colorful autumn leaves from the trees and harries them along the ground. Oak and maple leaves, plastered to the pavement by the rain, seep their pigments into the porous concrete. Then the wild wind blows them away, leaving dark silhouettes, ephemeral artwork.