Just what it is that people think about when raking the leaves from their yards? It must be something good because I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone look unhappy or angry during the process. Now, maybe at the time someone is asked, or is just beginning to rake they don’t look all that thrilled, but if you observe the holder of the rake, I think you’ll see that a sense of peace, calm and determination wash over them, not unlike the brilliant crimson, hot orange and majestic purple that wash over the leaves. Just as the leaves know when to fall, the true leaf raker knows his role in Fall.
I’ve raked a few leaves over the years—I have ten huge cottonwood trees in my back yard—raking isn’t something that gets done in a day or two at my house. It’s the outdoor Autumn meditation. Hear the sounds of leaves falling, floating—quiet—almost silent, but audible during a rest on the rake. Listen to the crackle of leaves under my feet and the drag of the rake over the near dormant lawn. And the smell, well that is the scent of Autumn. It’s all about focus. As I picture in my mind all of these contemplative aspects of raking, I begin to smile, and then laugh as I remember Mr. Martin, the man who lived across the street when I was growing up.
I vividly recall my leaf collection book. My Fall obsession: hunting for as many different colored and shaped leaves as I could. Then I individually “sealed” each leaf in plastic wrap.
Mr. Martin, on the other hand had a different obsession with the leaves. Of course he was an adult. He had what I can only call a riding – outdoor – vacuum cleaner. Perhaps it might have even been a converted mini-street sweeper. For two months of every year, Mr. Martin became one with his yard. When he wasn’t pacing his lawn vehicle back and forth across the fading Kentucky Blue Grass, which was rare, he could be spotted darting from his garage with an enormous rake to get the five or six leaves that would fall between the pacing and the parking of the giant leaf sucker–this all before the advent of the beloved leaf blower.
Mr. Martin owned the first leaf blower on our block—to him an absolute thing of wonder. We knew of his purchase from the unique “hum” of this contraption. From then on we were treated with the constant whir of engines and smell of gasoline. One year—I think this might have been during the gas crisis in the seventies, Mr. Martin resorted to nearly full time raking. Those were more peaceful times–no loud mowing sounds, no obnoxious blower noises. I guess all the same, Mr. Martin was communing with nature in his own way. He always looked happy.
Every year, my entire family, usually one at a time, though sometimes in a group, would take a few minutes every day to watch Mr. Martin groom his property. More than once my father would comment with the roar of the blower in the background, “He takes all this energy to blow the leaves to everyone else’s yard and then overnight Mother Nature blows them right back into his yard.” Until I was older, I never really understood why anyone raked leaves because it always seemed to me that the wind took care of the evidence of the passing season.
My earliest thought on raking held one purpose—to jump into the piles my father made. I really don’t think I have one clear memory of my father bagging those leaves . . . perhaps the wind . . .
Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born~Anais Nin
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