Crunch

The past couple of days, my yard has taken on a new sensory effect. There is a distinctive sound which can best be described as a "crunch." This sound is caused by one thing only, the fallen leaves from my trees. Each year, as autumn wanes towards the holiday season, the leaves fall and become a familiar sight of the season. They also furnish that particularly cozy resonance of dry fall foliage when they are trampled.

Leaves have always been a part of American history. The deciduous forests of North America once stretched from New England south to Florida, and from the Atlantic Coast west to the Mississippi River.

About.com, from the internet, tells us the following. When European settlers arrived in the New World, they found an almost solid forest of timber that stretched all the way to the Mississippi.

These hardwood forests were so dense that the old saying among settlers was, "a squirrel could jump from limb to limb and go all the way from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi, and never touch the ground."

The American Indians had adapted their lives to fit into these forests. The European settlers changed all of that. As the famous frontier began to move inward from the coasts, the clearing of the forests to make room for farms and pastures began in earnest.

The forests were cut for many uses. Firewood was the most common use. Homes and buildings were also mostly built from wood. Ship building became a big industry in the New World as well.

These uses of our American hardwoods were extensive, but by themselves they would never have depleted the forests. It was a much more wasteful practice that accomplished that feat.

In order to clear the land for the fields and pastures, the vast majority of our ancient forests were simply cut and burned. Acre after acre was cleared in this manner. The practice was so efficient, that less than 10% of the forests were left, mostly in the Appalachian Mountain region.

One thing I found out in my research for this topic was that our area was not included in this forest. Most of Vernon County, with the exception of some of the areas along streams and rivers, was prairie land. The lands along the Osage bottoms to the north of town had a few trees, but even there, it was mostly prairie grassland.

Trees and their leaves provide us with a lot of life's renewing elements. One of the most important of these is the cleaning of the air. Carbon dioxide is taken in by plants, such as trees. When the trees combine sunlight and water with the CO2, they produce the chemical reaction known as photosynthesis. The main byproduct of this reaction is oxygen.

Without the trees and other plant life on our planet, we would all die from a lack of oxygen. It is a dance of nature between plant and animal life. We produce the carbon dioxide they need to survive, and they in turn give us our oxygen.

Now that fall is here, the green of the foliage is gone. It is replaced by an array of colors that make fall just as beautiful and enticing as the return of the green in the spring each year. The cycle of life in the trees and their leaves is symbolic of all life. New growth comes each spring, followed by the fall and winter when life ends, only to begin again next year.

As a kid, I used to watch television shows about famous pioneers, like Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. I also loved books and movies like "The Last of the Mohicans," by James Fenimore Cooper. In these tales about our early history, the settlers and the Indians lived in these same eastern forests.

It was not unusual for the characters to be in conflicts. The Indians and famous frontiersman like Crockett and Boone were mythical in their ability to live and survive in these woodlands.

One thing they were supposed to be able to do was to sneak up quietly on an enemy. Well, I have decided that that is more myth than fact. If Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett or the evil Indian Magua tried to sneak up on my house, they would fail.

My leaves are so thick and dry, you can hear the squirrels when they run across the yard. No one can pass through these leaves silently.

There are many sounds in the trees at this time of year. The wind makes the leaves that are still on the trees crackle in another unique sound. The acorns are also falling with regularity. All of these noises of the timber make fall a really interesting time of year.

The city street department will be coming around to all of our neighborhoods in the next few days and weeks. The leaves will be picked up and the whole process will start all over again after winter. So, for now, you have a few days to just take a walk in the woods and smell the wonderful scents of autumn. See the wonderful colors of fall, and, finally, one should take no care as you walk. So, go ahead, bull your way through the leaves and make your own distinctive "crunch-crunch-crunch."