Falling

Autumn Leaves and American Elections

One of my sitting spots, still green a month before Election Day / © Bryan Pfeiffer

This is the first of three essays about life falling to earth in autumn. The second will feature an enterprising caterpillar, the third a Balsam Fir needle and a songbird.

WE the people of the U.S. are fortunate that election season coincides with vivid displays of fall foliage. As the planet and our discourse burn literally and figuratively, our northern forests erupt in leaves of flaming red, hot yellow, and burnt orange. Even the toasty browns are lovely — fifty shades of brown.

From here in New England, autumn can be a reminder to a weary nation: pause, breathe, look around at the colors. We have more in common than what we’re led to believe by the ravings of political extremists and the rantings of social media. Sure, the world’s scary and messed up, but it’s the only world we’ve got, a beautiful place, still worth saving. Can we find new ways to get along beneath these leaves?

After more than a half century of gawking and gasping at the autumn colors, never once taking them for granted, I have a new way to get along in the world beneath these leaves: I sit in the woods and watch them fall and float to earth. Each leaf becomes a kind of mediation on change and a source of respite.

Oh, sure, when leaves fall some of our spirit falls with them. We know our horizons are losing their hues, that “stick season” (November here in the northern forest) lies ahead. And yet autumn is not so much a demise of the green as it is a passage in the cycle of life. Every leaf that falls matters.

Apart from my own woodland reflections, which I’ll get to in a minute, autumn is a transfer of wealth from canopy to earth. The fallen leaves enrich and stabilize soils, sequester lots of carbon, and become habitat for insects, amphibians, small mammals, fungi, and microorganisms. By some abominably rough calculations on my part, 125 trillion leaves drop from hardwood trees in Vermont each autumn, together weighing about a 100 billion metric tons. And that doesn’t include evergreen needles, which do indeed fall (and which will be the subject of my third essay in this series). Falling leaves are the genuine “trickle-down economics” — winners all around, especially at the bottom. Or as Camus put it: “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”

In my new habit, I sit and notice how the blades of various tree species cut through the crisp air, flutter about on north winds, or otherwise haphazardly trickle down. As each lands near me (occasionally on me), I can attest that, yes, when a leaf falls in the forest it does indeed make a sound. (When there’s no breeze to shake the branches, my practice demands more patience — sometimes like waiting for a shooting star during a meteor shower. And that’s fine.)

On this past Sunday afternoon, for example, I watched a ragged Black Cherry leaf tumble and come to rest atop a Red Maple leaf still green and fixed to its branch. (Interrupted drops to earth like this happen a lot.) I noticed a slender green inchworm caterpillar rappelling fast through the canopy on a strand of silk, and then another caterpillar of a different species hitching a ride to the forest floor on a Sugar Maple leaf landing at my right knee. (The caterpillar on that maple leaf will be the subject of my second essay in this series). Then another cherry leaf tickled the bough of a Balsam Fir before making its way to earth. On and on it went like this — seemingly insignificant events in the grand scheme of a forest. For me, however, an endless cascade of joy and respite — the benefits of noticing.

That same night I slept in the forest beneath the stars and the foliage. Yep, the leaves fall at night as well. I heard a pack of coyotes yipping and whining in the distance, and flocks of Canada Geese migrating overhead. Sleeping outside in autumn without a tent is good for the soul. So is dawn. Shrouded in morning fog, I woke up to dew drops going splat on leaves and the croak of a Common Raven overhead.

Some of you might liken watching leaves fall (or dew dropping) to watching grass grow or paint dry. I’ve got nothing against grass growing — wild grass (not monoculture lawns). Although I might indeed watch paint dry, I usually prefer to watch Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) butterflies, Painted Skimmer (Libellula semifasciata) dragonflies, and Painted Bunting (Passerina ciris) songbirds.

© Bryan Pfeiffer

And yet during these sits I have no such ambitions, neither birdwatching nor butterflies, nothing to seek or identify. Just accepting what falls. I try to forget my inbox, fires and floods, and the terrible news of death by war around the world.

In the U.S. we used to vote only on a Tuesday in early November, chosen by Congress in the 1800s as a date when crops had been harvested and rural Americans could more easily get to the polls before the onset of winter. So much has changed, of course.

The forests burn literally in Portugal and Canada and Brazil. Communities flood in Vietnam and Austria and the U.S. We’re warming a planet and depleting its biological diversity. Rather than finding solutions together, we hold elections and then argue some more.

Still, a vote cast is like a leaf falling — insignificant on its own but central to something greater. The stakes are indeed high. So whether we vote early or wait until Election Day, even a leaf falling to a depleted earth can offer refuge and respite.

We may need it for what begins the day after November 5.

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My home — Vermont / © Bryan Pfeiffer