Got That Fall Feelin'

Maybe it's just wishful thinking, since South Louisiana isn't known for stunning seasonal changes. It pretty much goes from hot and unbearable to cold and rainy and right back to hot and unbearable again with a few "nice" days scattered in between. Back home is where Fall really happens. The leaves change to reds, yellows, and oranges before falling to the ground which is great because then you get to rake them into giant leaf piles and jump in them! Crops get harvested, wood is being cut and stacked for winter, fall festivals pop up, Halloween, High School Football...the list goes on. But it's the smell in the air that I miss. The air is crisp and carries perfectly the smell of those fallen leaves and the wood being cut and the ears of corn freshly harvested from the stalks and my oh my those pumpkin pies on the town square at Fall Festival. I love trekking through the woods when there is a nice layer of fallen leaves on the ground. They crunch as you walk, even on cool, misty mornings. The moss on the trees give that deep woodsy scent as you walk by. Wildlife is active and there is a photo-op in almost any direction. Sounds cary for miles it seems yet the quiet is almost deafening as you anticipate what will be heard next.
One of my favorite Fall activities was picking corn with my dad. I'm not talking riding in a combine singing along to the radio either. Remember that John Deere A? Picture that with a one-row corn picker attached and a wood-panel wagon behind that creeping through a field. Once the wagon was full, we'd have to unload it into one of a couple of corn cribs that my dad actually built when he was a kid. The wagon had a lift-gate on the back and it was my job to open that thing enough to let some of the corn spill out onto the hiker that carried it to the top of the corn crib. A crude operation to say the least, but one of my favorite Fall jobs. It was pretty much identical to the picture above (a copy of which is hanging in my son's bedroom). Oh how I miss those days.

I think my next trip home will include a tromp though the misty woods just so I can take a deep breath of that Fall air and smell the crunching leaves.