A while back, I can’t quite recall when exactly, I heard/read somewhere that if you catch a falling autumn leaf in the air before it touches the ground it is a sign of good luck. I fell in love with that idea. The thought of this leaf, with a lifespan of one single season having never touched the ground - will never-ever touch the ground - because I caught it in my hand.
For all I know I may have made this up in my own head or in a dream and accepted it as a real thing. When I shared this superstition with the children with whom I ran through the forest (a perk of my job helping coordinate running programs at the YMCA), they asked, “Who said that?” I couldn’t recall, but it didn’t matter. We started turning our faces up to the trees, awaiting the random flutter of a yellow, crispy leaf to chase.
This leaf we sought had never been touched, altered or interfered with by our modern, tech-obsessed world. This leaf that likely interacted with ladybugs, birds and other flying beings, but lived entirely separate from our terrestrial reality. It turned it's broad surface toward the sun, and was later washed by the spring rain. Battered by the wind, it clung to the tree with a strong and flexible stem along with it's green, chorophyll-fortified brethren.
Now weakened by the shorter, cooler days of the season's change and facing the inevitable fall to the ground -- if caught it in the air by one of us, we might somehow save this innocent leaf from corruption! It could remain a pure element of the natural canopy from which it tumbled. Immortality?
Yet, that leaf did serve it’s life purpose. Aiming it’s broad face toward the sun's warmth, it transformed solar energy into food for it’s mother tree. Fruit and seeds were nourished by this energy to guarantee generations of trees to come. And critters sheltered within and beneath for the spring and summer months.
Then the days get shorter. Once these leaves wither and drop into our world below, who knows what might come of them? Someone may rake, bag and send them to the dump. Or maybe they all are doomed to be stomped by boots, rolled over by big rubber tires and turned into pulp. Then mixed with litter and road run-off to be forgotten. Hopefully they land in the soil from which the roots grow and become one again.
Regardless of the truth (or absolute nuttiness) of this superstition, we - the children and I, spent the next hour dashing side-to-side, on-and-off the trail, to try to snatch these brittle beings before they touched the earth. In almost all cases we failed. And we nearly flew off of steep banks or ran head-on into trees in our desperate efforts. We debated whether it was bad luck to shake the tree first to loosen leaves…and decided that it would, indeed, be cheating.
At the end of the run I had one trophy, fallen from a maple, that practically jumped into my fist. Spencer had nimbly nabbed a small handful of various sizes and colors. Alisa had tried SO hard, zigzagging at every possible target, but she didn’t catch a single fluttering leaf the whole time. As we boarded the vans I offered Alisa my prized leaf to take home. She declined. It wasn’t the same if the leaf touched another hand before your own. I completely understood.
Since then I keep wondering if I just made up that whole “good luck” thing in my mind or in a dream. But it doesn’t really matter. We all could use a little hope, good luck and magic to make it through life. And just maybe there is more to a leaf’s life purpose than we know.
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