Exercising Futility

I remember seeing catalog pictures and television images, when I was a child, of other children dressed in puffy coats, knit hats and colorful mittens lying and frolicking in piles of colorful leaves. I didn't really have a context for this in my own life, but I knew that it was part of that phenomenon called "autumn" by people living in a place where it could be marked mark by more than the beginning of another interminable school year and a change in the colors of the clothes on the rack at Hinshaws Department Store.

Nearly three decades later, I have a context... and I have the distinction of having already raked a pile of leaves 14 feet long by 6 feet wide by 3 feet high... and having at least 5 times as many leaves still in need of clearing from other areas of the yard. I think I can safely say that I have never seen so many leaves in my life, and I have certainly never had to actually clear so many of them. Well, I suppose I don't *have* to clear them. Several of our neighbors have simply let the leaves perpetually blanket their lawns. I, however, am among the leaf-pile-makers this year for my own sometimes inscrutable reasons.

The temperatures here have been unseasonably warm. It was 78F yesterday, and the forecast for tomorrow touches 80. It's a nice break, especially when I want to be outside and the cooler temperatures we'd begun to expect brought with them the threat of asthma flares. So, pretty much every day (excepting this weekend, when there was singing to do), I have spent 20 to 40 minutes outside, vigorously sweeping leaves into a pile by the street. It's great exercise, even if it is, more than anything, an exercise in futility. Yesterday, the majority of the 40 minutes I spent out there was devoted to clearing the same third of the front lawn I had cleared last week. Somehow, I don't mind.

I can't explain why, exactly, I have enjoyed moving the leaves around so much. The few times the glossy-topped, fuzzy-bottomed ovular leaves needed raking in our front yard in my youth, I wanted nothing more than to be paid richly for my labor or let off the hook. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it is just another way I can throw myself into living here, and nobody is telling me I need to do it.

One day last week my job stresses were piling up. I was feeling more than a little burdened, and I needed to expend my mounting energy in a way that wouldn't cause harm to myself or others. The weather was cooler, so I bundled up in my synthetic Ugg-style boots, pants, a scarf and a sweater, grabbed the rake and tore at the lawn with determination. The one thing I had failed to consider was just how strongly the wind was blowing that day. In short order, I found my carefully-corralled leaves scattering themselves across the yard again, spinning aloft like so many earth-toned ballerinas dancing to the music of the wind.

As stressed as I was, my first impulse was to be angry. But at what? At myself for failing to understand physics and the effects of force? At the wind for sweeping through the neighborhood? At the leaves for daring to move from the locations I had assigned for them? At God, for designing a world that I can't control?

I stopped for a moment, looked around, thought a bit, and then began to laugh. Immobilized, I let the wind play in my hair as it undid my work. I actually found myself thinking, "Well, that just means there will be more raking to do tomorrow when I want to melt down under stress and feel the urge to take it out on the leaves." I genuinely didn't care. My stresses had dissipated with the fluttering leaves. I didn't care what the neighbors thought, either. I mean, it is folly to rake on a windy day. Isn't it? And surely it is lunacy to stand there, leaves swirling around me, and laugh.

I guess my raking isn't about the leaves at all. It's about how alive I feel when I see the earth transforming around me. It's about the satisfaction of working with my hands, and letting my all-too-sedentary body feel the burn of exertion. It's about tackling a project that is way too big for me and just working at it, day after day. It's about discovering the beautiful new tender shoots of grass in the freshly-cleared patches that foreshadow the distant spring when the trees will bud and drape themselves anew in lush green robes. It's about letting the burdens of life that don't change -- my job, the endless piles of laundry, dishes needing scrubbing, floors needing sweeping, my favorite persistent worries and obsessions -- give way to a burden, no, an opportunity, that comes only when autumn creeps in with its golden splendor.

Nearly all of the leaves have fallen now. The trees subdivide the lavender-blue sky with their meandering denuded branches. I don't imagine I will be able to rake all of the leaves before I become to busy to rake, ice storms move in or my asthma prevents me from being active outdoors in the cold for more than a few minutes at a stretch. In the meantime, you'll find me here, willing them into piles, laughing at the wind, and relishing the exercise in futility that places me firmly here in this time and place.