Printer Friendly

Email This Page

Leave a Comment

Read Comments (0)

Sign Up!

A man can lose himself out here, with all these leaves. He can lose his sense of earthly proportion; for instance where the pile ends and where the ground actually begins. It’s bad enough not knowing, but when you stop caring, you’re done for. I have gone 84 days without raking a single leaf. Now the first winter storm is about to hit, and I am surrounded by leaves – absolute and unyielding - ripples in a vast, bare-patch-of-grass-less desert.

But I am fortunate, for my 14 year old son stands with me, his rake tentatively dangling from his hands, his eyes two sorrow-filled moons of despair. I tell myself he has come to my aid because he has recognized this grave, family emergency. If the sleet comes before we can move this pile of leaves off the driveway and into the woods, my wife will not be able to pull the minivan out of the garage, at least not without hobbling over a frozen pile of leaves, easily the size of several minivans. I want to believe he has entered into a new phase of adult responsibility and duty to his clan, but alas, it’s more likely my wife has threatened him with no Wii today if he doesn’t come out and rake.

All I can hear in my head, over and over is the voice of my co-worker, gushing these past weeks about his Leaf Master 3000 (not the actual name), which is sort of a rolling miniature wind turbine that you push (I think he has the atomic powered model, not available at Lowe’s), about how he can abolish every last leaf from his lawn in under 30 minutes. Sadly, it has taken 3 hours to get my massive pile of leaves to this point, where it be must migrated even further past the corner of the garage, into the cover of the woods beyond.

I have thought of every cliché I could use to motivate myself for this one last effort; for example whipping and driving them like cattle to the tune of Raw Hide – (Yee-haw, git along now, you ladies, yah!) but to no avail. As I regard the scene with my teenaged lieutenant at my side, I decide that the Gettysburg analogy is more apt:

“Good ground,“ I say, thoughtfully looking out over the brown, speckled expanse, “mighty good ground.”

“What?”

“Aw nothing,“ I reply. “But do you see how this side of the pile is just like the right flank of the Union Army at Gettysburg?”

“No.”

“Oh sure, come on,” I implore. It is suddenly as plain as day, “You see the Union line in the woods on the right side was badly outnumbered by the advancing Confederates, so their leader, Captain – uh – Jebediah – um – Smith – I think – swung the door right around on them. Turned the tide of the whole battle, maybe even the whole Civil War. That’s what we’re gonna do here. We’ll swing these leaves around from the back right through to the other side!” I’m suddenly invigorated.

“Whatever.”

The first silver pellets of sleet have begun to bounce off the expectant leaf bunches – blast you, weather man, you said we’d have until noon. We toil in silence, no bugles, drums or rebel yells. Our ruse of a leaf-moving strategy feels less like a historic battle charge and more like what it really is: a spiritless, mindless chore that expends irretrievable minutes of our lives, each and every fall. I could be inside, warm and toasty, enriching my mind with books, T.V. and the Internet. My boy could be feeding his hungry intellect too, perhaps with that new “Civil War Trivia for Wii” game that’s about to become the must-have for the Holidays. Suddenly, as if reading my mind he asks: “Why does it seem like everyone from the 1800s is named Jebediah?”

I laugh. “It’s not everyone, not even close - maybe only 80% of them.” The rest of the time it is the name I use when I can’t remember an important person’s name from the 1800s.

The leaves are becoming wetter and harder to move, but amazingly we are starting to make progress, and have our objective in sight. I have almost lost my companion to the indoors, but I remind him my knuckles are just as raw, my sneakers just as soaked. He looks at me with a horrified, almost pitying expression as I bellow: “We…must…hold…this…line!” We begin switching off roles; him in the front of the pile, me at the back and vice-versa, with an almost martial precision, guiding our transplanted fallen-leaf refugees onward.

With mere feet to go to the edge of the woods, we have all but abandoned our rakes, and have taken to kicking, throwing, and even scratching - whatever it takes. Perhaps this effort has retained a certain desperate valor after all; with the leaves finally out of sight of our neighbors and passersby, we wring our numb hands and it feels as if we’ve accomplished something beyond drudgery – it’s a challenge we could not have met without each other. We’ll forget about it in a day or maybe a week’s time, and certainly long enough to put off the notion of purchasing a Leaf Master 3000 of our own.

In fact, I’m certain I’ll forget long enough to actually look forward fondly to the next fall season, and another battle of Man vs. Leaves.