Not Every Leaf Falls in Autumn
By H.R. Zimmerer
The leaves that remain can be easier to hear than to see. A small beech stands among bare trunks, its papery foliage close to the colour of the ground. At first it blends into the wood. Then a little wind passes through and the leaves rattle together. You look up towards a sound that would have belonged to almost every tree a few months ago. Now it seems to belong particularly to this one.
I like the scale of that discovery. No rare animal has appeared. Nothing extraordinary has happened to the weather. The walk has simply become more exact. There are the bare trees, and there is the beech that has kept some of its leaves. A place that might have been described as uniformly brown and quiet turns out to contain a distinction worth stopping for.
Leaf retention has a botanical name: marcescence. It occurs in trees including beeches and some oaks, whose dead leaves can remain attached into winter. The National Park Service notes both the bronze leaves retained by beech and the winter foliage of many oaks. Knowing the word makes it easier to recognise the phenomenon elsewhere. It also makes me curious about the tree in front of me, rather than treating it as something that has failed to follow the usual autumn timetable.
There is considerable pleasure in learning an exception. We begin with a broad description because we need somewhere to begin: deciduous trees lose their leaves, winter woods are bare, wind moves the branches. Then a particular tree makes the description less tidy. Some leaves are still there. Their colour has changed, their texture has changed, but they remain part of the sound of this small patch of woodland.
I do not want to hurry from that fact to an explanation of how people ought to live. Autumn is so often made to offer advice about releasing things that it can become difficult to look at a leaf without hearing an instruction. The beech is not presenting an opposing philosophy. It is a beech. I find that more interesting than asking it to approve either holding on or letting go. It gives me another detail to love without requiring me to make a rule from it.
The sound of a familiar walk changes with the year. There is the fuller brush of leaves in summer, the scrape of dry ones beneath a boot, the small impacts of rain in a canopy. Later, the same stretch of path may seem open and unusually still until wind reaches the few leaves that remain. I can hear a difference without being able to describe it perfectly. That is often where an acquaintance with a place begins to become personal.
On a cold afternoon, these details can take on an unexpected warmth. A papery leaf is not warm to the touch, but there is warmth in recognition: I have heard that before; I know which tree it is coming from. The pleasure belongs to knowing a place through more than its best display. The bare months have sounds and textures of their own, and they need not compete with summer to be worth returning for.
The tree may look almost motionless from a distance. Closer to it, one small cluster stirs while the rest is still. The wind reaches another twig and the sound moves. You could stand there a while, trying to hear the order in which it travels through the leaves. By the time you walk on, the path has acquired a new landmark: the place where the beech begins to speak in the wind.
Further reading
- Recognising American beech, National Park Service.
- Oaks and marcescent leaves, National Park Service.
Prose observation
A few leaves are still holding to the beech after the rest of the wood has opened to the sky. They are the colour of folded paper. When the wind comes, you hear them before you hear anything else.
A walk changes its sound as the year goes on: the soft brush of summer, the dry scrape beneath a boot, this thin winter rattling above your head. You could pass the same trees for years and still be learning what it is like to stand among them.
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