Fallen Color

By Tom Poland

 

And a Never-Forgotten Dog

Can uprooted trees flaunt fall color? No. Dead men don’t talk and dead leaves don’t reveal colors. I figured it was impossible. Instead of leafy bouquets gracing the earth, uprooted crowns wither, die, and brown. Helene’s “robberation,” as I heard thievery described, will deny me complete beauty until I die.

This fallen color business, I didn’t just grow up at the edge of a forest, I grew up with it. As its trees reached for the sky, I felt at home beneath them. As oaks, hickories, and maples sunk their roots deeper into red clay, a boy, fourteen and afraid, hid in woods and cried. The country’s youngest president had been shot to death. Later, holding a rifle of my own, I stalked gray squirrels, assassin that I was.

In the years and seasons to come, dogwoods, maples, and oaks revealed miracles. Spring’s green, tender leaves epitomized perfection. Dogwoods’ white bracts, green crowns, and blood-spotted leaves lent credence to Sundays. Summer meant playing in the small stream running from a spring where crayfish scooted about. The woods were aflutter with birds and butterflies. Rabbits hopped along. Deer bolted.

Fall’s acorns rained down like hailstones, and winter brought a miracle. A rare snowfall meant a chance to walk wintry woods that seemed more like Vermont, though I had yet to lay blue eyes on Vermont. But with boughs crusted white, limbs sporting a meringue of white, and the ground softly cloudlike, the woods behind home seemed Vermont-like. My boots crunched, a deafening noise in that dampened winter wonderland where the creatures revealed their wanderings. Tracks galore.

Today, though 91 miles and 52 years away, I still see my woods as a sanctuary, a place to walk the old logging road with the crunch of leaves and call of birds as company. The fertile fragrance of fallen leaves, it’s a kind of spice. Not nutmeg, certainly not cinnamon, more like black pepper, akin to the aroma of new leather. As strange as that sounds, it’s accurate.

Over four decades ago my parents deeded a portion of those woods to me. I knew then I’d not sell that tract. My father buried the best dog I ever had—my last dog—on my land in August 1985. She was the only thing I wanted from the rottenest marriage in the history of humankind.

A dog’s love is as good as it gets, and I can never forget her. Each fall I visit her. That was hard to do this fall. Trees lay about like pencils scattered by a schoolkid’s temper tantrum. And her little grave? I couldn’t find it. The fallen trees disoriented me.

A week later I found her grave beneath a fallen oak. Quartz gravestones white as snow all knocked askew. Worst of all, no red, yellow, orange, and sienna leaves whispering prayers as they softly land on her grave, God’s annual way of sending my little dog flowers. It hurt.

—

Fall color will again grace my woods for even the most ordinary tree seems lovelier in autumn. And leaves will again flutter onto the resting place Dad carved out of my land. He knew his son could never shovel that last bit of dirt onto his little dog’s grave. I knew it too.

As lesser trees grow into greater trees, full autumnal majesty will return to my land-turned-cemetery, though I won’t be there to see it. Then again, I might be by my little dog’s side when the leaves whisper their fallen color prayers. It’s a peaceful and beautiful thought … as peaceful and beautiful as woods ablaze in autumnal glory when vivid colors slumber no more.

 

Georgia native Tom Poland writes a weekly column about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and culture and speaks frequently to groups in the South. Governor Henry McMaster conferred the Order of the Palmetto upon Tom, South Carolina’s highest civilian honor, stating, “His work is exceptional to the state.” Poland’s work appears in books, magazines, journals, and newspapers throughout the South.

Visit Tom’s website at www.tompoland.net

Email him at [email protected]