I first noticed that autumn had shown up last week, not in the usual way by turning a calendar page or by adjusting my thermostat, but when my wife and I realized that we’d have to leave earlier for our customary evening walk.
We had hoofed our way from the house, squinting into the setting sun, but realized at nearly the same moment on our return trip that the good old boy who had warmed us into rolling up our sleeves was by then nowhere to be seen as we made it back to our doorstep. We knew then that we would have to be moving our departure times up if we hoped to put in the same mileage each night.
A little stand of red sassafras trees delivered the same news in a less subtle way. All summer long I walk past those trees, sometimes snapping off the end of twig as I lope by so I can hold it under my nose. It has a scent that takes me all the way back to my first homeplace, to a pocketknife and the whittled end of a green, speckled stick.
Most trees are just now beginning to turn on us, a change that I look forward to each year, although I know that the season doesn’t seem to last nearly as long as the cold, hard months that follow it. I’ll be raking and piling leaves soon, a chore that I relish after my day is spent cooped up in a classroom, nearly as antsy as my students to get outside, to escape to breezes not forced through filters and vents.
The essayist Hal Borland says it better than I can in his book, “Homeland, A Report from the Country.” In a chapter called “October and Answers,” Borland wrote: “To waken in the night and hear the quiet of autumn for the first time can be a startling experience. You have seen change coming, the subtle shift of the noonday shadows, the weary look of the leaves in the elms, the first drift of milkweed floss, and you have felt the change in the look and feel of the air, itself. But not until you lie in the darkness and hear no cricket, no katydid, not one of the little sounds that are the proclamation of teeming, transient life, are you aware of the possibility of silence…”
For me, it is the change of the trees. Sure, I notice that the spiders and the crickets make a more concentrated effort to get into my house, trundling and hopping through opened doors when they can, as if they know I have pre-paid my heating bill. They also know the jig is up and understand that a cozy corner of a closet or hallway is a better spot for them than those found under my siding or in an abandoned hayloft.
I have done a little reading about the subject of changing leaves. When I was in school, I put together not one, but two large leaf collections for my elfin botany teacher, Harry Wunker. He was a very kind man, and a good teacher, and nothing made him smile more than thumbing through pages of leaves, most of which were almost certainly pressed beneath old encyclopedias or National Geographic magazines.
I collected my leaves in the fall, partly so I could also pick up buckeyes and bittersweet and whatever else I could find as I traipsed through the woods. Between those old scrapbook pages are perfectly preserved russet oak leaves, purplish red dogwoods and nearly golden hickories. I found yellow gingkoes, orange-red sugar maples and long, tobacco-like paw paws. I can still smell a slight scent of locust as I turn from one specimen to another.
Why do leaves turn color? I mean, how do they get their color? For that answer, I turned to the experts: the U.S. Forestry Service. From one of those pamphlets the government produces on its way to record deficits, I discovered that scientists “don’t fully understand all of the complicated interactions that cause the best display of leaf color, but they do know that leaf pigments, length of night, the type of tree, genetic variation, and the weather all play a role.”
To put it simply, leaves have three basic pigments: chlorophyll — which, I imagine, we all remember reading about in junior high science — carotenoids and anthocyanins. The latter two play ugly sisters to the former until the fall. When cooler weather reduces the amount of chlorophyll, which is used by plants to collect sunlight so they can produce their own food, the other two pigments emerge in fall glory … at least for a few weeks.
When I was a young man, I thought at one time that I wanted to be a scientist of some kind, although I seemed to be more interested in digging at my feet for fossils than I did looking at the treetops for the beauty of leaves or the shapes of clouds.
Scientific facts help me understand the fall colors better, but I’ll take ignorant bliss over expertise any day if it helps me appreciate a red October more. It reminds me of Mark Twain’s lamentation in “Life on the Mississippi.” He wrote that he had two views of the great river. The first view was the one he had as a boy; the Mississippi’s beauty and majesty infatuated him then. Later, as an expert riverboat pilot, Twain said he was like a physician — he couldn’t see the beauty of his patient without looking for a flaw, some sign of a disease.
Borland said it just as well. He wrote: “…with the glory of the woodlands spreading over the hills and with ripeness and achievement all around us, life is more insistent than data.”
Mike Lunsford can be reached at hickory913@aol.com, or through regular mail C/O the Terre Haute Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. His book, “The Off Season, The Newspaper Stories of Mike Lunsford,” is to be released this week; visit Mike’s Web site for ordering information at www.mikelunsford.com. He will be signing copies from 9 a.m. to late afternoon Saturday at Collom’s General Store in Bridgeton.
Mike Lunsford
THE OFF SEASON: Autumn arriving: The hunt for a red October
- Mike Lunsford
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A walk in the woods
I went for a walk in the woods one day last week after work. It was a warm and green afternoon, and a fresh blue breeze blew in from the west like a new spring friend.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘Dowsers’ provide hope more than science
My grandfather was a man of God. Many times I saw him, his right hand held high in the air at his Wednesday night “prayer meeting,” praising the Lord before weeping at the altar on his knees. And yet, he was a “dowser,” a “diviner,” a “witcher” who, as a favor, would grab a forked sassafras stick and find water for some poor unfortunate whose well had gone dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: As of today, it’s unofficially spring
Despite the calendar telling us not to rush things, I think it is all right to go ahead and say spring is here. The Ides of March has passed, Easter is coming soon, and I have already been out in my yard with a rake, getting my boots muddy. It looks like spring to me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Twain’s Sawyer helps us yearn for ‘wilderness of childhood’
My cousin, Roger, stopped in one day last summer for a glass of tea and a little conversation. Rog has lived an hour’s drive away for years and now, and besides summer reunions, I don’t see him nearly often enough. He’s a good man who has raised a good family, and he owns a healthy sense of appreciation for not only the life he has now, but also the lives we had years ago as kids.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Cheerful green of wheat fights winter blahs
There is a light drizzle of freezing rain tapping at the door of my cabin today. It is little more than a week before the words I am writing are due to appear on your breakfast table or work desk with your morning coffee and scrambled eggs. But I write when I can, and today, despite a full schedule of televised football games, and the stacks of ungraded papers in my briefcase, and a good book lying open on my nightstand, I am clacking away on a keyboard to the whir of a heater and the steady drip of my gutters.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On the simple joys of watching it snow ...
It began to snow about 20 minutes ago, as I write this, light, wind-driven flakes that fall silently into my woods as I watch from a window.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On this day above all, ‘Peace on earth, good will to men’
More than a year after his wife’s death, the great American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote in his diary on Christmas Day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Remembering a Lefty Frizzell-kind of Christmas ...
My brother and sister and I sat around a Thanksgiving dinner table a month ago, shifting in our seats just enough to make our yet-to-be digested turkey sit a little more easily, and, as we often do when we get together, we reminisced about our childhoods for a while.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The wonders of wading in ‘The Iridescence of a Shallow Stream’
I have no idea how many times I have written a story that begins with the wistful phrase, “When I was a boy. ...”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Little man who came to dinner changes feel of household
My 7-year-old nephew, Carson, came to visit us last week. That in itself isn’t earth-shattering news, for he often drops by with one of his parents or the other, the last time dressed as a ghoul for Halloween. But for a couple like Joanie and me, whose youngest child is now nearly two decades past Carson’s age, having a little guy like him in the house, even for a few hours, takes a bit of adjusting.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Reflections: a bit of red glass and our daily thanksgivings
I sat in the half-light of my old desk lamp a few nights ago, a chilly wind blowing in from the northwest that made me appreciative of my long-sleeved shirt and purring heater.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Growing up — and ‘old’ — with many mouths to feed
At our family reunion last summer, I asked my brother if I could borrow a pair of photo albums he had put together. Over the past couple of years, I have committed quite a few of our family’s old yellowing snapshots to newly cropped and digitalized lives, and I wanted to do the same with some of the pictures John has collected for himself.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Violets in October – a pleasant surprise
I guess I don’t pay much attention to the weather forecasts these days because it surprised me a bit when our furnace kicked on a few nights ago.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A library is a good thing — even a little, homegrown one
I grew up with libraries, and I can’t imagine there ever being a time when I won’t want to wander one exploring it like some bookworm-Balboa, finding an author or title that I never really knew existed before. Creating those “Eureka” moments seems to be a dying interest now that so many of us download and digest books electronically without ever really considering that there just might be some hidden gem we’d have liked even more had we simply stumbled upon it on a shelf by accident. I think those moments of discovery are not unlike kicking up lost treasure a mile from where X marks the spot.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘soothsayer’ who came to dinner
I’ve had a good time opening my mail these past few weeks. Sure, I still received the usual junk about lower credit card rates and satellite television packages, but the genuine letters made me smile; most were about a story I wrote in late August.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The agony of de‘feet’ has this writer on his heels
I don’t know if I can electrocute myself by using a computer and soaking my feet in a pan of warm water at the same time, but I am contemplating taking the risk. My feet, particularly the right foot, have staged a 10-digit rebellion over the past few months. After a half-century of commendable service, my pods are screaming to be taken in for repairs, a big inconvenience for a guy who works on his feet all day and whose “sole” form of serious exercise is putting one foot in front of another walking the local roadways.
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Mike Lunsford: Summer’s hidden beauty worth the wait
The great naturalist John Burroughs once said that nature teaches more than she preaches. I can’t recall a summer where that rings true more than this one, for that old sun of ours truly taught us a thing or two these past three months.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time to redefine the concept of ‘assisted living’
Although it has been nearly two months now, I can’t forget the few afternoon hours I spent on a hot June day this summer at a local “assisted living” facility in town. I had been asked to speak to a group of men there about Father’s Day, but for most part, the wonderful old guys who came to listen certainly made my day more memorable than I did theirs.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Observations on smooth stones and blue-green water…
It was raining when I began to write this. Although no one could rightfully call what we got this afternoon a “downpour,” it was nice to have my windows open to hear the steady drops of a passing shower tapping on my dry-as-dust deck and hard-as-concrete yard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: This summer has us recalling the heat of ’36
It was “only” 99 degrees one afternoon last week when I decided to work on a backyard deck. With a jack and a drill and a little more sweat than I wanted to invest in the project, I went about the business of leveling its sags and dips a bit. The sun pounded down on my head and shoulders like a thug’s blackjack, but as I packed my tools and drank a glass of cool water under a big maple tree a few hours later, I couldn’t help but think about how lucky I’ve been these past few dusty and drought-stricken weeks. I have worked under this summer’s heat lamp for only a few hours at a time, but God help the roofers and utility linesmen and firemen, and so many others, who are out in it day after long hot day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We had no better friend than Andy Taylor
The world is a sadder place now that Andy Griffith has died, but at least we still have Andy Taylor.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Wading deeper into the subject of Blue Herons
Like a relative who has worn out his welcome, the hot, parched weather of this young summer has already overstayed its visit with us, so my wife and I have found ourselves walking our road later in the evenings to keep our feet cool and our backs dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Thanking two dads whose gifts have never stopped coming…
It is nearly a week until Father’s Day, but I have had my dad, and my father-in-law — a second dad to me — on my mind today. I wrote about both men just a few weeks ago, but I have set my mind to write about them again anyway. I don’t want this story to be sad; they both loved to laugh and wouldn’t want that. No, I just wanted to tell them hello, and to thank them again for what they still do for me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Feeding time at the homestead draws a host of new guests
I stepped outside into the warmth of an unusually mild early March morning last week to do what I always do just before I grab my briefcase and book bag and lunch bag and head off to work. It’s nearly always dark when I leave, even as the sun gets up earlier and earlier in the late winter, so I often go about the business of feeding our cats with porch lights on and a flashlight in hand.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
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NM Mom Chases Down Child Abductor
Raw: Crash Sends Car Into Fla. Pool
Raw: Obama Sits Down With Elementary Kids
Dying Man's Blinks Lead to Murder Conviction
Wash. State Releases Draft Rules for Legal Pot
Raw: Driver Ejected From Truck, Over Bridge
Wind Energy Push Leaves Trail of Dead Eagles
Raw: Germany Protestors Picket Barbie House
Horse Saved From Slaughter, Goes on to Win Big
Ousted IRS Chief: Errors Not Caused by Politics
Music Therapy Bonds Parents and Preemies
Terror Suspect Due in Court in Idaho Friday
Tensions As Israel Targets Syria in Airstrikes
Fmr. IRS Head Insists No Politics in Targeting
Raw: Spacewalking Astronauts Hope to Stop Leak
Obama: 'Couldn't Be Prouder' of Jason Collins
Raw: Bear Falls From Tampa Tree
Officials Arrest Man in Idaho in Terrorism Case
Today in History, May 6th
Raw: Child, Stroller Falls Onto Pa. Train Tracks
Lotto Fever Sweeps the Country
Coffee Stop Leads To Arrest Of YouTube Sensation Wanted For Murder
Bearded Dragon Reunited With Owner
Marine Reunited with Warzone Companion
Beyonce Is Pregnant!
SF baseball player overpaid $500,000 RETURNS money -- and team says KEEP IT
$1 Million in Jewels Stolen at Cannes Film Fest
Dad returns from Afghanistan, surprises family during Rays' first pitch
See Jennifer Lopez's New $10m Hamptons Mansion
Woman tricked into taking abortion pill
Emma Watson Goes Pantless
IRS scandal: Republicans seek to tie Obama to agency's woes
Play of the Day: Flipping to Safety
Pregnant Kim Kardashian Squeezes Her Swollen Feet Into Stilettos
Top Videos of the Week: Angry Taco Bell Guy, Glacier Moves on House, Dog Hates Baths
Cindy Crawford Stuns At Cannes
Raw: Marines Come to Obama's Aid in the Rain
CUTE: Monkey shares lollipop with dog, then HITS pooch on head with it
Miranda Kerr Looks Sexy in a Bikini Photo Shoot
