Monday, November 26, 2007

www.whiteville.com

By JEFFERSON WEAVER
Staff writer

As I stepped out the back door the other morning to greet the day, the walnut tree exploded.

The sun broke through the pines of Colly Bay just as the dogs broke joyously for their morning run, and Old Sol caught the reds and yellows of my beloved walnut. I’d already dodged a few big green warning shots, but with the explosion of my tree, I knew the summer was finally gone.

Never mind that temperatures in the 80s were predicted for the coming week. Never mind that my dogs would be hasslin’ by sunset, tongues lolling in the summer’s evening. Never mind that my friends were still bugging me to grab a pair of shorts and go fishing.

Autumn is never, in my opinion, a matter of the calendar. Autumn happens when God decides we’ve finally had enough heat and humidity, when He decides, in His infinite wisdom, that the water really is too cold to go swimming.

And I know autumn’s here when He decides my walnut tree needs to shed its summer frock for a multicolored party dress destined to last but a few weeks.

Our kitchen calendar is marked with dates more important than the scientific start of autumn; notes mark church homecomings and deer season, along with my wife’s curlicued reminder across the top of October that “Warm fuzzies (– clothes which will make up her wardrobe from October through April–) are in the white suitcase.”

Then there are the political signs that go up as soon as the leaves fall down. I always dread the day when the leaves are thin but the lies are thicker and campaigns turn downright nasty. Either I’m getting older, or the campaigns are getting nastier than I remember.

But still I love the beginning of the fall of the year.

The third season lends itself to foolish, if somewhat philosophical, introspection, in much the same way as spring, the second season, inspires frivolous thought. I think the two names, fall and spring, might be reversed, since pleasant temperatures and the trees and the treats of the year are actually springing forth in the fall.

On the other hand, spring – that blessed apology for the nastiest of winters – is a time when the misery of winter has fallen away, and God’s blessings again fall upon everyone whose world extends past a TV set and four walls of isolation.

Of course, fall is a good way to describe what else happens in the autumn; not just the surrender of leaves to the inexorable pull of gravity, but the fall of the last pears, apples from a forgotten farmstead, grapes, pecans, chinquapins (although not for a while yet), walnuts, and the king of fall’s bounty, persimmons.

My persimmon trees – I claim them, although every fruit I defend from the possums, bears, coons, deer and birds is the result of blatant and unapologetic trespassing – haven’t done well this year, but there are a few sickly-green turning purple-pink fruits awaiting a good frost.

Autumn’s true calendar rang clear the other night when Dan’l Grunt, feeling a bit more energetic than usual, dug his way out of the fence and headed for the hollows.

Throughout the night I heard the runaway hound striking trail, then treeing, roaring a warning to every coon in the Cape Fear valley that he was back (and warning me that I would need to bolster up the fence the next chance I get, lest he go coon hunting every night, and without me).

Persephone, the sad little twice-rescued deer hound, is a bit more sprightly, the arthritis in her hips and her growing cataracts ignored and cast aside as the tantalizing scent of deer reminds her why she was born.

‘Sephony seems to have forgotten that she ended up on the side of the road (we think) because she could no longer run with the younger dogs, dogs who began singing their own version of “Ode to Joy” early on a recent Saturday morning as deer season opened.

All these things and more – the growing need of a comfortable and disreputable sweater, cats lobbying for a warm lap, homecomings and reunions and dinner on the grounds that make rough-cut two-by-twelve planks groan under fried chicken, potato salad, and 1,001 pecan pies – they tell me more about the season than any calendar ever printed.

The calendar may say autumn started Sept. 23, but my heart knew it started when my walnut tree exploded.

Weaver is a staff writer at The News Reporter. He may be reached at 642-4104, ext. 227, or via e-mail at jeffweaver@newsreporter.biz.