Pile it ON!

I am good at making piles.

There are piles of clothes in my laundry room.

There are piles of paper at my computer.

There are piles of dishes in my sink. But the piles I like the best are the piles we make in the fall. Brown, red and yellow, each tree adds to the ante with its own shape and size of delicately fading leaves.

Autumn leaves have played an important part in the life of our family.

Nate proposed to me at the top of Butterfield Canyon in a late fall snow storm. On the way down the canyon he stopped and gathered leaves off one of the many chameleon like scrub-oak trees that were trading their glossy greens for the sun bright yellow and brilliant red. I keep those leaves carefully pressed in a book on our mantle. I don’t remember how many leaves he picked off the tree – he said we could give each of our kids one when they got married. Some part of me hopes he only picked three.

When we lived in Nate’s grandparents house, as they served a mission. we were cursed with three giant ash trees and 17 or more towering poplars. They dumped leaves all over the lawn. It felt like all we did was rake and mow leaves all fall. Nate was out raking up the leaves one night when he lost his wedding ring.

A combination of the cold and the work let it slip right off his finger. We had cousins and aunts and uncles, flashlights and metal detectors. My mom finally found it. Nate says that was the point she either wanted us to stay married or figured she didn’t want to give me the chance to do any worse – so she gave it back.

There is something magical about jumping into a pile of leaves. Something magnetic. Something that whispers to the child that dwells quietly in each of us “Come and jump into me, burrow through me.” Piles of leaves capture the smell of the earth, when the tops of the trees, so far from our reach are finally ours to play in.

It’s not truly fall, and winter cannot come, until the leaves piled so high, are scattered and tossed, by those who pounce, bury and burrow.