Jefferson Weaver • The Hunt for Fall’s Peace

The tulip poplar in my front yard changed clothes last week.

Seemingly overnight, the leaves went from green to brown and yellow. A stiffening breeze Saturday meant the leaves began falling in earnest, adding to the already undefeatable quantity of leaves and pine straw in the yard.

The sweet gums were ahead of schedule, dropping their golden carcasses for a couple weeks, and the oaks were busy providing a bumper booty of treasures for my squirrels, deer and goats, a hailstorm-like crop of acorns carefully hidden under a carpet of leaves, prompting my beloved chosen granddaughter to compete with the natural consumers of said produce. I am required by Her Majesty to store them away for the hungry animals this winter, and naturally I follow her orders.

Every fall, the leaves make me feel like that fellow who was condemned to carry a big rock uphill, only to see it roll back down again when he reached the top. Only difference is I have to rake leaves, and I do so with a walking stick and a .38. The stick is so I don’t fall down, and the .38 is in case there’s a copperhead who disputes my right to the front yard.

Autumn is coming in hard at Valhallasboro; by the time you read this, hopefully everything will have been hit with a killin’ frost that will finally wipe out those repugnant dog fennels that have taken over my backyard and one pasture. They killed a riding lawnmower and defeated a blade-equipped weed-whacker, reducing our battle to one of wills and steel.

While I admit there is a lot of satisfaction in attacking said plants mano y heribo mala, it’s not very practical. Samson may have slain a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey, but my back aches too badly when I’ve taken out a hundred or two plants with a machete or bushaxe. A heavy frost will make the stems brittle and tasty for my goats, so they’ll finally work for a living instead of growing fat on store-bought corn.

Speaking of corn, Jingles and Carl have started spending more time on my feed pile. Their early arrival and extended visits make me wonder if we’ll have a colder winter than normal.

Jingles is a raccoon, and Carl is a squirrel we raised to adulthood the other year. Carl usually brings his missus and a friend or two along when they raid the corn pile. They compete with Dale the possum and his occasional companion. Dale is darker, and runs in circles like a NASCAR driver. His companion is lighter, without the telltale yellow neck of a male, and walks more purposefully.

The squirrels work the dayshift, and the masked bandits and marsupials  handle the night. While I’m a still hunter, I don’t often shoot over bait; my pile is primarily to draw animals to what was supposed to be a security camera, but has instead turned into better entertainment than most broadcast television. Every week or so I add a bag of cheap bird seed to the mix, earning the thanks of a half-dozen different avian species.

Fireball, our resident buck, has somehow made it another year (at least so far), and a couple of the does have been visiting the pile as well. Swamp Daddy won’t show up until after the rut; he didn’t get to be old enough to have a rocking chair on his head by being stupid. Our dogs make all the deer too nervous to hang out for very long, especially when there are better options elsewhere (like my poor, sad little persimmon tree) but they’ll become more frequent dinner guests as the days grow shorter and the nights crisper.

Jughead has trained up his boy Charlie to sing back at the coyotes who roam the outskirts of our farm; the tribe of canis latrans stays ever-wary of the bluetick-Catahoulas that may or may not be out on patrol. Jug’s brother Bingo occasionally joins in, but usually he is far above such shenanigans, preferring to enjoy the nights in his favorite chair. Jug has also taught Charles to trail and tree a coon, which I am sure would lead to a strongly-worded letter to management if Jingles and Co. knew how to write. If Jingles is like most coons I have known, I am sure some of his language would not be family-friendly, either.

I love the fall, even though nowadays the cooling weather makes my aches remind me of bad choices and taking chances that I might ought-to should have resisted. I love the blue-black nights of sparkling meteors and fireballs that burn from horizon to horizon, challenging even the bright Beaver Moon that lets one walk without aid of a flashlight. I love the bay of the hounds and the bark of the squirrel and the mourning of the owls and the occasional bellow of the bear.

I love greeting the mornings bare chested, feeling the rush that comes from the chilly air, even though I’m no Golden Era mountain man, and I’ll be donning one of my old man sweaters before the morning is over. Water from a hose is always a good thing, but it’s achingly cold after a good frost or two, when the earth decides to withhold its own warmth and reject what little is offered by the sun. I don’t much care for wet feet in the fall, although the occasional sopping socks are worth the rewards of wading through a beaver swamp when the hides have gotten prime, and those spiritual rewards are worth far more than whatever the auction check provides in the spring.

A fire in the fall is a companion, its heat a welcome friend, as opposed to a smoky, sweat-inducing defense against the mosquitoes of summer. Whether it’s burning those uncountable leaves or just enjoying a cool sunset outside, a fire on a fall evening helps one understand why man has sought comfort of such since the days of the caves.

Fall has many civilized benefits, of course: family reunions and homecomings, festivals and fairs and turkey shoots, deer drives and rabbit runs and bird hunts, church revivals and Thanksgiving. I enjoy all those things, and contrary to popular belief, I am not a troglodyte hermit who loathes most of the human race — well, not often — but I’m happiest in the fall when there are no other people around, and for just a little while, it’s just me, God and whatever of His creations happen past.

People have their place – it just doesn’t happen to be in the woods with me when the sun silhouettes the pines and there’s a hint of woodsmoke and a rifle under my arm and a snuffling hound teaching his boy the ropes while I hobble along not caring if we actually bring anything home, but instead we revel in the hunt for fall’s peace.