Before We Hibernate: Leaves, Wood, Food

By Holly Wren Spaulding
Sun contributor
Each fall my mood takes a plunge when things start dying off around me. At the end of the growing year, there is a thread of despair as I remember my own mortality and the end that comes in the cycle all living things. Low pressure or the stirring of a storm often reflects my own interior climate.
Photo by Ryan Romeike
I maintain a regular correspondence with a friend who lives 15 miles east of me. Most days, the same clouds or the same blue skies over my home in Cedar are as likely those he sees on the East Bay. Despite this, our letters always seem to begin with meteorological details. I write: “Today the swamp is pulsing moisture through the air and everything is slick with overnight rain.” He writes “Small stalactites of ice hang from the tomato plants on the porch. The basil’s looking a bit disconcerted with the cold. I’m thinking its not going so well for the porch garden.” These fleeting observations are perhaps like stage directions, a way to set the scene.

When I write, “the maples are losing to the wind but one near my window has hung onto all its purple leaves,” perhaps I am also commenting to my friend that I too am determined to preserve my good humor a little longer.
In the midst, fall is noteworthy for its extremes. By mid-October I enjoy the wind buffeting the house, rattling the stovepipe, making music all night in the branches. To my poet friend I praise those breaks in the weather which provide another chance at outdoor chores before the snow.
This is the season of fortifying the woodpile, cleaning chimneys. Gutters are mucked out, downspouts straightened as we brace for heavy rains. The really good homeowner has already packed away the lawn furniture and tipped the picnic table to prevent rust or rot. Flowerpots have been moved or emptied. Driving around the county I admire those who in addition to what must be done, have put out pumpkins or a potted asters.
After a couple of hard frosts, I’m hanging on to what still grows. My calendula and nasturtiums persist so that even now I have fresh flowers on the windowsill. But the beds still need tidying if the crocus and tulips are to find their way come spring. Reluctantly I pull up the tangle of wilting leaves and unopened buds, take it all to the compost heap.
Arranging firewood for the heating season is always a last minute affair at my house. Of course, the sensible thing to do is split wood while it can cure in the sun; at this point we risk running into damp pieces before fair weather returns. But we are young and we live with this risk, knowing that if we must, we’ll go for wood in knee-deep snow.
Lately, we drive the truck back into the woods on the weekend, unload the saw, bar oil and red can of chainsaw mix. I step into my Carhartts, put on work gloves. The puppy couldn’t be happier than when we point her to a decomposing stump where she digs a dark hole into the earth, spraying rich soil in every direction.
On one of the adjacent parcels someone is firing a .22 amidst the hum of lingering birds and squawking squirrels. Every step into the spongy layer of leaves on the way to the leaning ash or the downed maple sends up the tannic odor of rotting leaves. We find the best path from firewood to truck bed and start cutting, start hauling.
Certain work reminds me that indeed, so much depends on this body. I use all of my weight to thrust the wheelbarrow over the hummocks, swiftly through the standing trees. I bend and lift with my knees, use all my strength to heave the largest rounds of wood onto the tailgate; I get up to shift the growing pile to the back of the truck bed. Much of what we gather won’t be cut to length or split until we are home again. I pause, leaning against a large beech, calculating what is needed yet to get through until May.
The other day a large diesel truck roared up to where we were working. I braced, thinking it was some grouch come to chew us out for trespassing. It turns out it was an old classmate I hadn’t run into in over a decade. Mike was in his full bow hunting gear and hoping we could give permission for him to access the land to chase a wounded deer, should it come to that. We caught up a little — he has two kids now, works for his dad in the construction business — and then each returned to our most pressing work: getting fuel and getting food.
If summer calls us to plant and tend, and play in the beauty of that hard-earned season, then fall summons us to gather, even to horde. We still play — take the canoe out for one more paddle, or go hiking across the unfrozen dunes when the sun appears — but not once have I spent a fall in Leelanau without rushing a little to get the essentials in order.
Those of us who retain some measure of personal responsibility for our survival have been occupied with gathering what we need for winter since the tomato glut in August. We pickle, can, freeze and ferment, stocking the larder with the fruits of — if not our own — then our neighbors’ labors. Squash are shelved beside onions, garlic, shallots and other storage crops. Hunters and fishermen have an added food group to smoke or cure or fill the freezer with. In the fall we are not so different from other animals in our scramble before we hibernate.
When the light falls gray and cold across the yard, I put the kettle on for coffee, certain that our tired bodies will not resist sleep tonight. The longest burning, best fuel we can find is ironwood and we take armloads to the basement for those exceptionally cold nights in February. A couple of pieces in the Morso before bed means you can count on good coals in the morning, sparing a trip to the woodpile in pajamas.
We talk about what to make for dinner — roasted sweet potatoes with walnuts, maybe fresh bread, some Red Russian Kale, which is best after a frost when the leaves are tender and sweet, salad with gorgonzola. We go on like this while, shifting the last cord of wood from the damp ground to long stacks. We move as we are made to move, and then we stop to look out across the brown weeds and the bare trees at the settling swamp.