It’s the middle of November. In Wisconsin that’s about as interesting a time as oh, say the middle of March. Naked raw earth, bare limbs. Yawn.
I don’t think Ed minds, or even notices. Every day is your birthday...
Do you want to bike from McFarland to Lake Kegonsa? Oh... I am completely in love with the idea of biking somewhere that is not work!
It’s gray and the forecast says “showers later.” Later. I’m okay with that. Later. Not now.
We leave our bikes by the McFarland Town Hall, where farmers are selling (against all odds) roots and apples and hemp bracelets.
We buy apples. You can always use apples. Ed’ll eat five at a sitting and consider it a fine meal. Fresh and honest.
The twenty mile bike loop is easy (Ed’s evaluation). Just small hills. I love how small to him is strenuous to me. And how my cold is his toasty. And how he can push the pedal down so hard that one stroke will put him miles ahead of me.
The scenery is pretty in spite of November's best effort to make the world bleak. You can always count on cows to add life to a toneless landscape. Ed watches as I step down to take photos. Run from her! She’ll eat you tomorrow!
I briefly consider giving up meat forever.
Close, but no. Maybe next year.
The air is pungent with the smoke of burning leaves. This is autumn as you want it to be: smoky, woodsy and slightly threatening (with rain).
We come to the point where the Yahara River runs into Lake Kegonsa.
We were here four years ago. Kayaking. I remember iy well: we landed here.
The me of November 05. The Ed of November 05. In those days, I still showed off my perky and robust ways. Now I grumble about hills and steep inclines and cloudy gray skies.
A few tentative drops of rain hit the windshield as we eventually make our way home. Okay, not home. We part ways: Ed is off to get a beard trim, I’m off to work at the shop.
I think about how hard it is to love mid November. Except that today, it's sort of easy.
Oh how I love the smell of burning leaves!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a child we lived in Detroit, then known as "The City of Trees". A city filled with glorious elm trees. I remember playing in the piles of leaves, then helping my father rake them into neat piles in the gutter. Then being told to stand back while they were set alight filling the neighborhood with that wonderful smell. A smell which is only a memory today due to new laws and the loss of hundreds of thousands of trees.
Perhaps if they had not been so beautiful. Perhaps if they had been planted 100 feet apart instead of 40. Perhaps if the space between the sidewalk and the curb had been wider. Perhaps if the homeowners had watered them. Perhaps if the European beetle had not arrived in this country in a load of infected elm wood for furniture.
Then maybe Detroit would still have some of the lofty elm trees that formed vaulted cathedral-like tunnels of shade over neighborhood streets.
During the 1930s some Netherlandish beetles that lived in elm bark and carried a deadly fungus came to ravish America's beloved elms. Most cities had chosen the fast growing elm to shade neighborhood streets. Detroit planted over 400,000 trees on city land, between sidewalks and street curbs. The saplings quickly grew to enormous size, up to 120 feet tall. But the quick growth soon caused the wide tree trunks to lift sidewalks and attack the curbs. Crews replaced the uplifted sidewalk sections with curved sections to avoid the encroaching trunks.
The beloved trees seemed to protect the homes. Homes surrounded by the shade trees seemed not to need air conditioning. The leaves allowed filtered sunlight to attract the eye heavenward, and indeed most that recall the trees, describe the arches of elm branches in terms of cathedral vaults used by medieval church architects to lift the spirit.
In 1950 the first case of Dutch elm disease appeared in Detroit. It quickly spread, with cases reported in several neighborhoods. During the early 1950s Detroit lost only 2,000 trees per year, but by the 1970s the city had lost over 80% of its beloved elm trees.
Today I live in the suburbs north of Detroit on a couple of acres filled with a wide variety of trees including apple, locust, birch, maple, ash, oak, and pine. We get a lot of leaves every autumn, but it is against the local laws to burn them: we can only add them to the compost piles for use in our flower beds. Trees have always played a prominent part in my art. I spent a whole year in high school studying and making hundreds of drawings of trees of every kind. Trees still show up in some of my pieces today.
Occasionally when I venture out past the suburbs this time of year, I can smell my childhood and see my father again, if only for a brief moment.
For some reason, I thought of you & this post this morning. There is a small buffalo herd down the road from me. Whenever something special happens (a birth or someone brings a gift), a big sign goes up to let passers-by know about it. A new sign went up today:
ReplyDeleteWe buffalo thank James Johnson for the croissants!