Yesterday, while I was out in the yard (again), it seemed to me that I have been raking leaves all my life.  No, not continuously --I have taken time out to discover girls, learn basic auto repair, gain an education, and build a career, among other pursuits.

What I mean is, as far back as my memory stretches, I have stood at all ages with rake in hand, faced with the chore of gathering and disposing of deciduous discards.  All ages except for those barren years in El Paso, Texas.  My memory tells me, no doubt accurately, that El Paso has not a single tree, but has miles and miles of rough, superheated, baked desert floor and an occasional cactus under which a lizard rests in patient vigil.  Instead of leaves, my father insisted I rake the sand.  I think he wanted to make sure I didn't lose my competitive edge.

Regardless, once the sultry days of summer had disappeared into last month^'s tee-shirt sweat stains, I was inevitably confronted with the perennial task.   Personally, I never saw the need for the job.  Didn't my father realize that if he would just show a little patience, Mother Nature would take care of the problem herself by natural decomposition or, at least, with a good strong breeze?  My word, he was an impatient man.  I didn't realize at the time that his career as a soldier had instilled in him a sense that an area should be kept neat and I, having idle hands and a near vacant head, was the ideal labor force to insure that one aspect of the yard was pleasing to the eye.  Confronted by this never-ending cycle, I was forced to develop survival skills.  Depending upon the size of the yard and the number of shedding trees, those skills included a good deal of escapist thought.

The worst yard I ever confronted coincidentally (hmm... is there such a thing?)  belonged to the house wherein we resided for the longest consecutive string of time, those years following Dad's retirement from the Army.  I remember it as I first explored its long bending shape, from front to rear.  I recall four tall wood and leafy barons, each holding a fiefdom of my father's kingdom.  I stood at the foot of each of them, squinting into their rustling branches, taking their measure.  They, in turn, paid scant attention to me as they placidly went about their existence of towering above the chaos and scurrying disorder which plagued the surface world.  In the next few years I came to know each of them and find boyish uses for each of their unique attribute.

            Filling most of the front yard, by the sidewalk, grew the tree which caught the brunt of my childhood clambering into adventurous heights.  This was also the tree which reached out and snagged away, from my playmates and I, many a balsa wood airplane in flight and toy soldier equipped with the most modern of home manufactured parachutes.  As much as I liked to climb that elm tree, which also gave the porch a great deal of cool summer shade, I heard and hated the silent scream of each leaf  it sent plummeting to the ground.  After all, I knew I would be responsible for clearing away each and every one of them.

The side yard was long and wide, admirably suited for our summer of croquet madness and a later flirtation with archery.  The flirtation miraculously vanished the bare instant I shot an arrow straight into the sky. Immediately I realized I had absolutely no idea where that pointed deadly missile would come down and I sprinted for the shelter of our roof's eave but the crown of my head acquired a vulnerable feeling which I have not lost.  This length of property had as its vegetative glory two trees fused into one trunk which then divided again into two separate growths.  It (they?) could not compete as the best tree for climbing but it provided welcome shade as well as a fine place for me to lurk in ambush.  Armed only with imagination and a cast off crooked branch as a rifle, I would watch erstwhile friends, now the enemy, cross into the splendid field of fire blissfully ignorant of their impending noisy, albeit bloodless, demise.  The "V" of the trunks made for an excellent rifle rest and provided wonderful protection from their invisible bullets.

The back yard was dominated by a huge black chestnut tree which was inhabited, or at least visited, by hordes of ravenous grey squirrels.  This giant's contributions did not stop with the normal layer of stricken leaves.  Treacherously hidden among those leaves were black chestnut husks gnawed into jagged caltrops.  As if to prove that one tree could provide sustenance for any number of squirrels, there were also numerous unscathed nuts still dangling which managed to escape the questing paws and sharp incisors of the furry predators.  Whether chewed or intact, black chestnuts provide even the most die-hard would-be Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer with painfully obvious reasons to wear shoes.

Finally, scarred and hunched, bowed and crooked, shoved in a corner of the yard where Dad would park his Studebaker truck, was an ancient oak.  The tree and the pick-up deserved each other and were almost inseparable companions.  Both had seen better days and both were slowly returning to their raw elemental states despite our puny attempts to maintain their haggard existences.  During the long quiet nights I could hear them groaning to each other as they compared their varied ailments and complaints.  In my youth, disrespectful of age or wisdom, I would strip hunks of bark from the weathered centurion simply because it was old and seemed to invite such abuse.  Its retribution came, as did the others', each autumn.

            Summer heat eventually faded into cooler days and chilly nights.  Shadows grew long earlier and shiny green grass and leaves curled into tones of brown or rampant orange, yellow, and red.  Each year I watched in horror as leaves which had resisted the winds of the summer tornado season now, for no good reason, simply let slip their grasps on parent limbs and whirled to the foreboding earth.  One after another, they surrendered their high perches in light and air to join us earthbound mortals in the shadows.  Despite my best efforts with my mother's lacquer-like hair spray, I could not keep those leaves stuck to their branches.  I couldn't understand it.  I'd seen my mother walk through gale force winds without a hair out of place thanks to that canned shellac. Helpless, I watched the faded grass lie down beneath a carpet of multi-hued carcasses.  Eventually, my father would gauge that enough of the little bits of natural litter had accumulated.  On that day my annual torture would begin - he would point me toward the tool shed and announce that the time had come for me to actually earn my allowance.

How many times have I stood surveying the field of contest while formulating my campaign?  Through hard experience in our previous yards, large and small, I had learned that one does not just grab a rake and start flailing.  Oh, no.  A mental map must be drawn, a route devised, a series of pile locations plotted, and a plan formulated.  I had found that I could not just push all those leaves ahead of me in an ever growing pile.  At some point the pile would shed more leaves than I pushed into it!  No, no -- the thing to do was subdivide the field to be raked into lesser leaf gathering sectors and removal bags would have to be staged at each pile point.  Then, and only then, would I apply angled steel tines to withered vegetation.

Once I began the job I was faced with the tedium of repetitious labor.  Stroke, stroke, stroke, step, step, stroke, stroke, stroke, step, step.  .  .  Boredom would sprout almost immediately.  Soon I had no choice but to escape into some kind of interactive fantasy.  In my mind the leaves became unruly beeves which had to rounded up and formed into orderly herds.  Or, the leaves were a form of bacteria blocking the sunlight from the dying grass, and I was here to save the grass by scraping away the vicious infection!  Or, the bright colors became lines of Napoleon's nemesis, the British army - advancing in long ragged lines across the battlefield.

Lost in these escapist dreams T could rake hour after hour, occasionally brought back to reality by the harsh sting of a burst blister or the mundane matter of seizing armfuls of the piled discards and jamming them into a bag.  At some point in the day I could look back at my accomplishment, an expanse of lawn cleared of obscurement!  Even as I admired my work, first one, then two, then twenty, leaves would gracefully float downward and land gingerly in my footsteps.  With a heavy sigh, I would realize that this was my fate for the next month, maybe two, of weekends.  Raking.  Gathering.  Bagging.  Dragging.  Watching.  Waiting.  Raking.  All the while, in the back of my head I knew that in the distant future I would have my own children and I would never again in my life touch a rake, much less actually use the foul implement.

That is how I spent every autumn until I finally left home at age eighteen.  Now, twenty-two years later, so much has changed.  Instead of the huge section of Kansas prairie, my horizon has shrunk to a California residential lot.  On my property are two young trees, barely old enough to stand unassisted but unreasonably prolific.  I have my own rakes which I keep in the garage, not the tool shed.  I'm taller, heavier, more learned, but I am childless and the leaves still drop.  With deep resignation I grasp the slightly roughened wood shaft and step outside to put my skills and imagination to the test once more.  In silent expectation the ancient enemy rustles and dances.  I sigh, lower the tines, and...  stroke, stroke, stroke, step, step, stroke, stroke, stroke, step, step.

Yes, I know why the season is called "fall." It seems to me that I have been raking leaves all my life.