Late Fall in the North

by G.E. Shuman

I'm writing from my usual spot on our glider-swing, on the breezy front porch of our old Vermont home, on a chilly, late-fall Sunday evening. Our house is in the city, but the city is small. Our street ambles along the top rim of one side of a crater-like bowl or ravine; above the muted bustle of the business that is Barre, down in the hollow, below. Without even looking up, I know that people are passing by, as they kick the dry sidewalk leaves in front of our home. I could not make out faces in the dimness of this unlit end of the street, even if I needed to, and I do not.

It is overpoweringly peaceful here, in the dark, on the porch swing, in the constant, cooling, evening fall breeze. The air is fresh, with the slight, musky scent of withered lawn leaves, and it somehow delivers the dampness of a soon-coming overnight shower. No stars shine tonight, but, across town, on the opposing slope of the 'bowl,' street lights form vague reference points as to where the hilltops end and the sky begins.

How strange it seems, that the air is cool, almost brisk, but still quite unseasonably warm tonight. I do appreciate this milder than usual fall, and the tardiness of any coming frost. My furnace has run little so far, and that makes me very happy. Our largest, lawn-front maple still holds a few of its leaves, as if reluctant to let them drop. Amazingly, on this late autumn weekend I enjoyed a beautiful Sunday sunset clothed only in tee shirt, shorts, sandals, and chest-clenched coffee mug.

Every late summer and fall conversation that I can remember, during every late summer and fall season that I can remember, has brought the same comments and predictions from neighboring folks and friends, about the direness of the coming winter. I have yet to hear from anyone that we, this time around, are going to experience a milder than usual one. The comments, the stories, are always that “signs” are pointing to a rough winter “this year.” Either the almanac, or the moss, or the wooly-bear caterpillar has figured it all out, and we are doomed to receive lots of cold, and lots of snow. Invariably, these proclamations are so proclaimed with the utmost of sincerity, and supposed foreknowledge of the truth.

Lately, I have actually come to believe such comments, to accept such predictions, for what I believe is a very good reason. That reason is that we really will have a cold winter, with snow, and ice, and freezing rain here in the North, this year. This is because, well, as obvious as this seems... we always do. No mater how 'mild' the winter turns out to be, my furnace will get a good workout, as will yours, because they always do. I, and you, will spend lots of quality time this winter with our snow plows, snow shovels, and/or snow blowers... because we always do.

I think that it may only be that we forget, in the heat of summer, and the mildness of a comfortable fall such as this, that winter always comes. Yes, it always comes. But, I am now considering that the predictions about the hard and cold coming winter may be prompted by something more than forgetfulness. The comments about the approaching weather may be because, deep down, we, somehow, want the cold to come. Some of us, myself included, do not enjoy the cold, but we do enjoy the changing of the seasons. One person actually, recently, told me that she feels that we, in the north, have “weather attention deficit disorder.” (Her words.) She stated that she feels that we are always impatient for a change of the seasons, no matter which change we are facing. After all, cold means cozy fires; cold means close times with loved ones, the unexpected holidays of school closings, and being 'trapped' at home in a blizzard, with nothing to do but drink hot chocolate or coffee and stare out at the somehow-blessed falling excuse for laziness today. There is a bit of abandon and romanticism in the very idea of being out of control of the weather, and of being confined to sit by the fire and wait for the terrible storm to pass.

This time of year, even our language changes a bit, as we ready for the coming season. People talk of 'buttoning-up' for winter, in a batten-down-the-hatches sort of way. We go about our yearly 'winterizing' duties, and some 'stock-up' on emergency essentials. We are anxious, strangely, to be seasonally 'tucked in'; to be made safe, warm, and ready for winter's onslaught. I have never loved winter, but still have not only cleaned the furnace of our old home this fall, but have amassed, under the carport, a pile of split wood and sticks to fuel the fireplace on exceptionally cold evenings. In truth, the fireplace is not necessary. It is but a comforting, aromatic addition to the inevitable seasonal situation which will soon be upon us. Even though I do hate the cold, I love that fireplace, which, strangely, is useful only IN the cold.

 It's even darker now, and I'm thinking seriously of abandoning this chilly porch swing for a warmer spot on the couch just the other side of the window pane behind me. Hopefully, I'll be back out here on future evenings, until the coolness and the calendar convince me to build a fire and button up.

Spooky!

By G. E. Shuman

It is a distant memory, cold and old, dusted off now as a long-neglected, rediscovered book might be. It matters, somehow, that this nearly forgotten evening lived within a mid-nineteen sixties October. Perhaps it could just be that the late autumn wind cooled and creaked the leafless, lifeless-looking trees even more back then than now, again, somehow. Or, perhaps it is only because those old October thirty-firsts were actually spookier then... at least to the one whose memory of that long ago night it is. Those decrepit Halloweens of the past featured no costumes of bleeding bodies or vividly-maimed, tortured souls. Those nights were, simply, or perhaps, not so simply, ghostly, haunting, spooky nights, indeed.

On this one particular Halloween night, dusk, as dust, had settled slowly upon the small New England town of the boy's youth. Supper had been a hurried affair, gobbled by giggling goblins anxious to get out into the night... where they belonged. Low voices and footsteps of other spooks were already upon the steps of the boy's home; knocks and bone-chilling knob-rattling had already begun at the front door.

The boy of ten or so was more than ready to go out. By accident, or by plan, his siblings had already slipped away... without him. He was very alone; at least he hoped that he was alone, as he ventured into the dark, and into the much too chilly evening air. The stone-cold wind stabbed at his eyes as he peered through the rubbery-odored mask of his costume. The boy began the long walk through the frozen, dead, musty-scented leaves covering the sidewalk. Those deathly dry leaves crunched and cried out his location with every foot fall. He was fair game for any ghouls lurking behind the large maples which lined the street. As the boy walked on in the increasingly inky-black, he dared not peek even slightly around any of those rough old trees. It was a known fact that not EVERY roadside tree hid some witch or ghastly ghost, but the boy knew that he was certain to pick the one which did, if he were to dare to look.

By sheer will, or by chance, the youth succeeded in passing the haunted trees, and successfully trick-or-treated at many old homes along his own home's dead-end street. Every inch of the way he thought about the one house he dreaded visiting most; the house of the witchy-looking, hunched old lady. It was true that she seemed a kind soul in the daytime, but you never saw her humped old back or the shadowy, wrinkly look in her eyes in the daytime. She saved those things for just such a night as this. Her house, at least the enclosed porch of it, was as cold as a tomb every October night. The boy remembered this well from the year before, but that year he had been with his brothers and sisters. Even then the old witch seemed more interested in him than she should have been. He was small, and likely the only one of the group who would fit in her cauldron, he had always thought. As he walked toward her house this evening, every scuffling, leaf-crunching, spine-chilling step seemed to taunt him with the scratchy words: Every... witch... awaits... the child... who comes... alone.

The boy's small hands were nearly frozen by the time he reached the old lady's house, so very far down the street when it is night. He managed to climb to the top of the worn old steps. He stood there for a time, and then worked up enough courage to pry open the narrow door which guarded the witch's small and dark, windowed porch. The rusty door spring, worn to its own insanity by countless other small boys, who, the boy thought, must also have been fools enough to enter here, screeched a hateful, grating announcement of his arrival. This it repeated, mockingly, as the door slammed tightly shut; a stubborn-looking windowed wall between the boy and the world outside.

The long, enclosed tomb of a porch offered no relief from the cold, but some little bit from the cold night wind. The only light therein was that emanating from a maddening, perfectly-placed jack-o-lantern, which hideously smiled, glaring up at the boy from the floor, at the farthest corner of the room. The entire porch exuded the sooty-sweet smell of that candle-lit carved pumpkin. This aroma devilishly mingled with that of the crisp, cold Macintosh apples which filled a wooden crate at one wall.

The one who disguised herself as a regular, kind old lady during the daytime was very cunning, indeed. Her trap for such little boys was a porch table full of the biggest and best Halloween treats in town. Those very famous treats were the only reason the boy was even on this terrifying old porch, on this terrifying night. There was a tray which held beautiful candied apples, and another laden with huge, wax paper-wrapped popcorn balls. The container between them overflowed with candy corn, the boy's favorite. Blood red punch filled a crystal bowl, with paper cups all around it, to tempt just such a one as he, with likely poison.

Thoughts of tainted apples and boiling cauldrons momentarily filled the child. He then nervously picked his treat, and got it safely into the candy-stuffed pillow case he carried. Hearing the nighttime witch walking across her kitchen floor, right toward the porch, he headed out, past the screeching door, down the old steps, and toward home. The boy knew one thing for sure, as he tramped back up the street. If the witch had ever convinced any small boy to enter her house, that boy certainly had never come back out. But he, that night, had somehow survived one more dark visit there. And, he had gotten away with the biggest popcorn ball of all!

Yes, Halloween was different in the nineteen sixties, before the age of pre-packaged sugar and plastic holidays. There was something hauntingly powerful then, in the cheap paper cutout decorations, the cardboard skeletons, and the black and orange party streamers of those years. Fold-out tissue pumpkins and eerie (and probably dangerous) cardboard candle holders lit our New England yards. Homemade, and totally safe treats filled our old cloth bags. (The very thought of doing actual harm to some young trick-or-treater was inconceivable then.) Those bags were the carefully guarded property of night-crawling, costumed, youthful vagabonds, whose parents had no reason to fear that they would not return home safely. Those Halloweens were ones of simple, frightful fun, when cartoon ghosts and goblins, fake witches and funny Frankenstein monsters were all that stalked the lives and imaginations of innocent children. True evil had nothing to do with it at all.

The ghosts of Halloweens long-past may find their haunts only in aging, dusty memories, but the dark and distant night you just read about really did happen. At least, that's how this old trick-or-treater remembers it.   

The Leaf

by G. E. Shuman

At my wife's and my daughter's mutual suggestion, as a possible inspiration for this week's column, I ventured out onto our front lawn this afternoon to pick up a single maple leaf. Our lawn, today, is totally covered with such leaves, and our big tree is not empty yet. It wasn't difficult to find one leaf to bring in. I simply bent down and got a nice, bright red one.

As I look at it now, my simple maple leaf seems both exactly like all the others on the lawn, somehow, but, at the same time, different from all the others. When I first picked the leaf up, I thought of how the red-tinted sea of gold at my feet blanketed the earth just as the snowflakes of winter will, not many weeks from now. Picking my leaf was vaguely similar to observing a particular snowflake, among millions, after they, as the leaves, have settled down onto the lawn, from their ride through the air. As you know, no two snowflakes are exactly alike, even as they form a covering that seems as if it is made of precisely identical, tiny objects of white perfection. Today, so it seemed with the leaves.

I just now looked at my leaf again, as it sits on the arm of my recliner, as I continue to write. You know, and I thought, as I looked at it, that there is nothing inherently special about my leaf. It is a bit unique, in some ways, but I know that if I were to go out onto the porch, close my eyes, and allow the breeze to take the leaf away, I would never see it again. It would disappear into the crowd. If I did see it, I would not recognize it. Its 'specialness' at this moment is in the fact that it is an individual, and that it has been picked from the rest, to fulfill a purpose that the others have not been asked to do. It is here to help me write this column. While being as different from all the others as one person's face is from all other faces, my leaf still shares its entire identity with those others, even as we share our identity with all of mankind. Please let me tell you how I feel that this is so.

My leaf has a particular shape, a particular heritage, by which it is known to be nothing else but a maple leaf. It was formed for the same general purpose as all those other leaves now laying in the yard. It had, approximately, the same life span as the other leaves. Looking carefully at my leaf, I see the beauty of the bright red color which made me notice it, and pick it up, in the first place. But, up close I can see the leaf's imperfections, and notice that it has small blemishes, and even pock-marked signs of disease. My leaf, as all the others, has a stem, through which it was connected to its family tree. This connection nourished and coaxed it to grow, from a spring bud, to an unfolding, youthful version of the lush green example of vibrant life that it soon became. Looking closely again, I can see the veins through which the leaf contributed to the life of that family tree; the same passageways through which it, in turn, got its own life.

My leaf's future is not one of continued growth and vibrancy. Right now it is still somewhat soft, and not yet brittle, but that will soon change. It is interesting, to me, as my daughter Faith recently taught us on the ride home from a family apple-picking afternoon, that a red or gold leaf always contained the color that it assumes in the fall of its life. It's just that it isn't until the chlorophyll finally leaves the leaf that its true color, its true beauty, shows through. When Faith said that, the realization came to me that leaves reveal their greatest beauty as they approach the end of life. It is as if they go out in a blaze of glory, announcing to the onlooking, leaf-peeping world that their job is finished, that they can now show who they really are. I thought, as I thought of this, that we should take heart in the possibility that, in some ways, we can be just like the leaves. We can live, and grow, and nourish our family tree, and then go out as something that is aged, but beautiful.

Now I'm going to head back outside, and allow my leaf to colorfully rejoin the others on the lawn... that are just like it, but still so very different.