Falling leaves bring up pleasure found in trees

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There has been, it seems to me, an unusually large crop of leaves in my yard this year. Or maybe it’s that I don’t rake like once upon a time, mainly due to sore shoulders and weak knees, and many are still around.

Either way, there have been quite a few hitting the ground … and they’re not done yet.

There are lots of trees around our place. Guess that’s what happens when you live in the woods or what used to be woods, and you saved right many of the trees when you carved out a place for a house.

I’m a big fan of trees — not to the point that I can’t cut one if necessary but basically, I like them a lot. One reason it doesn’t bother me all that much to cut one, unless it’s a 200-year-old oak, is that trees are renewable. Cut one; plant one. I know, I know — it takes several years to get the new one up to where the old one was but still, you can replace them.

Try doing that with a dinosaur that’s laid around long enough to change into an oil deposit.

There are, however, two sides to the tree question — one good, one not so good.

When Hurricane Fran came calling in 1996, I wished we didn’t have any. (It just dawned on me there are people living today, driving even or maybe graduating from high school who weren’t even living when Fran came along and that event is still fresh in my mind.)

The combination that night of the howling winds snapping trees in its fury and then waiting in the dark with bated breath to learn where they would fall was something I don’t ever need to experience again. The next morning revealed the significant clean-up job ahead of us, and after several weeks of tree cutting and limbing and brush hauling it would have been OK with me never to see a tree again. Condo living was starting to look good.

Off and on since that time, there have been a few other issues with trees. Sometimes one will fall on a pasture fence and there will be the “Great Livestock Escape.” There’s a big pile of two-year-old leaves on top of my house I haven’t figured out how to remove yet since the tin roof is steeper than I want to dance across, but I’d like them gone for the look and to get the acid in the leaves off the tin.

But then there’s the good side. In the summer it’s 10 to 15 degrees cooler in our yard than out on the highway in front of the house, at least it seems that way to me, and the utility company people say the shade is good for you — and your light bill.

If there’s any wind the limbs and leaves will pick it up and send the comforting breeze across your troubled brow — good stuff while sitting in the shade with a Pepsi or glass of tea. It’s certainly cheaper than an hour with a shrink. And then there’s just the look — big ol’ trees with lots of limbs and leaves just look better than one that’s recently been topped and stands naked against the sky. And the colors in September and October are breathtaking.

And even the autumn disposal of leaves has its good points. I may be contributing to global warming, although many folks are still not sure that’s going on one way or the other, but I like to smell the smoke. I don’t like it when it gets in your eyes and nose, but I do like it when it penetrates your ol’ work jacket and you take that in the house and hang it up in the utility room and when you walk by it still smells like outdoors.

Youngsters still jump into piles of leaves and I like to see that. I don’t jump myself anymore; the ground has gotten too close to the top of the pile through the years, but I have fond memories. And the leaves make good places for the dogs to lie around during the day and at night if it’s not cold enough to get inside the well-padded and insulated doggy motel.

I’m pretty sure Joyce Kilmer’s line is still correct: “Poems (or columns) are made by fools like me but only God can make a tree.” Lord willing, I’m going to hang on to as many trees as I can … leaves or not.

Bob Wachs is a native of Chatham County and retired long-time managing editor of the Chatham News/Chatham Record, having written a weekly column for more than 30 years. During most of his time with the newspapers, he was also a bi-vocational pastor and today serves Bear Creek Baptist Church for the second time as pastor.