What We Leave.
When I was a kid I read a book of Cherokee legends. The story of the beginning of the world stayed with me because, according to it, all animals, plants, and trees were tested by having to stay awake for seven days and nights. Some animals—rabbits, mice, even deer—fell asleep. They became prey for the ones who stayed awake: the mountain lion, the wolf, the owl. Some of the trees managed to stay awake too. These were the pine and cedar, so they would be evergreen. Other trees didn’t pass the test, and I still remember the line: “Unable to stay awake they would sleep part of each year, and lose their hair in winter.”
I’d never thought of leaves as tree hair before that, and not just because leaves grow back while most people I know who lose their hair lose it permanently, but I still liked the phrase. And yet it didn’t explain what, to me, was the biggest mystery of all: why so many people felt it necessary to rake and bag leaves in their yards. Most put the leaves in their garbage cans, as though the trees were purposely throwing trash around. It seems like an insult to the trees. It would be different if they were sneaking over to someone else’s yard and throwing down a bunch of leaves then running back in the middle of the night, like a bunch of kids having a toilet paper party. That is something I did once—a toilet paper party, I mean, not dropping a bunch of leaves, and even though I was a teenager at the time it still seemed like a stupid thing to do.
And at least leaves are bio-degradable. Technically toilet paper is too, but leaves land there naturally, and toilet paper tends to stand out against the landscape, at least as long as it’s fresh out of the package and hasn’t been used previously, but that’s another story.
Why clear away leaves? People love to see the changing colors: the reds and yellows of trees on hills in the all-too short, beautiful time before the fall to the ground, before they turn brown and papery and crackle underfoot. Once the leaves have been shed they blanket the ground providing insulation, protection, safe spaces for next year’s insects, and nesting material for squirrels and other animals. They’ll give back to the soil what they took from it, passing it on to the next generation. A clean yard is a terrible thing, the rake and leaf blower instruments of destruction.
Well, I do use them to keep the leaves away from the doors. Tracked in underfoot they won’t do anyone any good. We don’t need leaves in the house, where we sleep.
For some reason the phrase “Do one thing every day that scares you” came into my mind this morning as I was leaving the house. It’s not a phrase I remember hearing recently and it’s not one I’ve ever given much thought, although now that I have it seems pretty ridiculous. Do I really want to go looking for things that scare me? Do I want to take unnecessary risks? I could easily say just driving to work scares me but, in spite of all the risks, that’s setting the bar pretty low. Since Daylight Savings Time ended a week ago and I thought it would still be dark when I started out but, for now, the change and the shortening days hasn’t caught up to my usual departure time. It was bright enough that only about half the cars I passed still had their lights on.
Sometimes in the park or even around my neighborhood I’ve seen lost pet signs. I always stop and take down the contact information just in case, although I’ve never seen a loose dog running around our area. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to lose a pet like that and never know what happened to them. There was one time, not long after my wife and I were first married, that we accidentally left the gate open. We had three dogs. Two wandered out into the neighborhood. The third, the oldest, a tall skinny dog named Jacob who was also my wife’s first Dalmatian, stayed in the yard and barked to let us know what had happened. After we got Jacob inside we drove around the neighborhood and found the other two just one block over. They both seemed relieved to see us.
I used to know someone who worked in an accounting department. Their department head allowed everyone to call in an occasional “mental health day”. Vacation time had to be approved well in advance, and it was usually assumed that anyone taking vacation would take several days. Anyone could call in sick if they woke up under the weather, of course, but if you were sick you were expected to stay home. Someone taking a mental health day could go to the gym, go to the park, go to a coffee shop. If the boss found out—and sometimes they did find out—it was copacetic. Someone who’d had a bad day, or a cluster of bad days, could call in and say, “I need a mental health day,” and do whatever they needed to decompress.
Three-hundred and sixty-four days a year, sixty-five if it’s a leap year, I have no clue who most of my neighbors are. Sometimes when I go out to get the mail I see people out walking their dogs or pushing strollers down the street, or walking dogs and pushing strollers, which is an impressive feat for a single person, especially if their dog happens to be a Great Pyrenees. Or I might pass by people out walking as I’m driving somewhere—always very slowly through my neighborhood because it seems to be a place where a lot of people like to walk which irritates me because I think I should be out walking too. It would be good for my health and also might give me some idea who some of my neighbors are.
While Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups have, for obvious reasons, consistently been ranked the best Halloween candy, with Snickers, M&M’s, Kit Kats, Twizzlers, Mounds, 
I’d just picked up the mail and was walking back to the house when I heard the yelling. I looked and could see an oversized SUV—that may be redundant—with someone leaning out of one of the passenger side windows yelling. I thought maybe they were picking up someone but then they drove down a few more doors and the same person leaned out the window and yelled again. I couldn’t see who they were or make out what they were saying but they drove past my house and up over the hill, then I heard yelling again. Maybe they were looking for someone they knew but it seems like a weird way to do it.