Maybe it’s a sickness or maybe just a primeval rooting. Whatever it is, it makes me want to burn leaves every fall.

What I’d like to do is rake them into long rows, winding around the edge of the yard at the base of the slope, then start the fire at one end of the row. Once the fire was going, I’d flip the rake over and take up a scoop of leaves and get them burning, then walk the edge of the piled row, spreading the fire along until the whole thing was burning. I’d stand back, watch the creeping red glow, the gray smoke drifting up, sifting through the low branches. When the fire burned low, I’d walk along, stirring the remnants with the rake, watch the sudden flare as the air hit the smoldering pockets. After all that was over, I’d make one more round, raking the last lumps, watch the fading fire and the last curl of smoke. That’s how I’d like to do it, the way it was done decades ago.

But, the city doesn’t allow that. Too many people with too little experience in safely handling open fires. Too many frame houses, old sheds and wooden shingles around for that sort of thing. And so, I have to get my seasonal fix by burning the leaves in a barrel between 10:00 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. sometime from November 2 and November 22 when the wind is less than eight miles an hour. Half a wheelbarrow load at a time and no lingering fringe of red around the base of the blackened leaf row.

It’s not the same, at all, burning leaves in a barrel. It’s not the same.  But I do it anyway.

There are so many things lost of the ways we left long ago, I try to hold on, cherishing memory and caressing every part of the past that doesn’t make me wince in pain.

H. Arnett
11-10-09