Adelaide Crapsey’s November Night states the following:

“Listen,

With faint dry sound,

Like steps of passing ghosts,

The leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from trees

And fall.”

The smell of burning leaves is missing in our small town during the fall but I am sure there are towns that allow leaves to be burned. In most towns, and cities, it is now illegal to do this.

There are many reasons for not burning leaves and air pollution certainly is on the list. In some areas, leaves are composted, some are bagged and placed at the curb to be hauled away and sometimes leaves are collected to be made into mulch for later use.

The smell of burning leaves and watching the grandchildren and neighbor’s children jump in piles of leaves are all things that take us back to our childhood, a trip we all love to make. While on a walk in the fall, Mary Alice always looks for a pile of leaves to shuffle through. I believe that knowing her days of jumping in a pile of leaves are in the past is why she enjoys shuffling through the piles.

Freshly plowed dirt is the smell of spring and grass that was just mowed is certainly the smell of summer. Fall has its own wonderful distinctive smells such as apples, grapes, walnut hulls, pumpkin pies, pears, apple cider and of course burning leaves, while winter is more about sounds, such as snow plows and howling winds.

Nature puts on many spectacular shows, some subtle and some awe-inspiring, such as the changing of the leaves. To some, fall is our finest season because of its blue skies, cool, clean air, and the changing colors of the leaves.

Local traffic in the mountains increases due to the leaf peepers taking rides to see the fall colors.

Every year trillions of leaves fall from the deciduous trees to the ground. On most days, the leaves will fall slowly but rain and wind will speed them along. A gust of wind will send the leaves whirling in every direction. The fallen leaves make a carpet on the forest floor for the hunters and hikers to walk on. Compare walking on dry leaves to walking on cornflakes.

The crisp, dry leaves make it impossible for an animal to sneak through the woods. A hunter on watch hears what he believes to be a deer, walking through the leaves, only to see a chipmunk scurrying through the leaves.

After the leafed floor becomes wet and pressed down, the deer can sneak through the woods, hardly making a sound.

Many birds and animals make use of the fallen leaves. Deer, which feed upon them, will get nearly three quarters of the energy needed to sustain their winter weight. Of course, the other quarter must come from higher quality food, with lots of nutrients. Squirrels will build leaf nests (drays) that are used mainly during the summer months.

During the winter months, the squirrels prefer a den tree, which they line with leaves, because it is much warmer than a leaf nest. While beavers use leaves to plug holes in their dams, opossums, raccoons, skunks and others use leaves to line their dens during the cold winter months.

What happens to the trillions of leaves after they fall from the trees? Well, there are all kinds of insects, bugs and bacteria that feed upon these leaves. There are ten billion microscopic organisms in just sixty cubic inches of soil. These organisms are known as the cleanup crew because they eat, digest, and expel the leaves as nutrients.

It takes the clean-up crew about two years to clean up the leaves from one year. So, at any given time, there is an accumulation of two years of leaves on the forest floor.

Evergreen needles, which hang on the tree all winter long, are considered leaves. You might not be aware but evergreen trees do shed their needles. An evergreen will lose some needles each year but not on the same schedule as deciduous trees.

For instance, pine trees will hold their needles from two to six years, depending on the type of pine tree. The needles are harder to digest, and sometimes take the cleanup crew three to four years to get the job done.

Oak trees are usually the last trees to shed their leaves in the fall. These leaves will remain on the oak trees throughout the winter. This is said to be because the oaks, as well as a few other species, growth has not entirely ceased when frost arrives.

A sudden drop in temperature stops growth when the fibrovascular bundles connecting the leaves with the twigs are still in a vegetative condition. In other words, the natural partition usually preceding the falling of the leaves has not taken place. The connecting fibers that have been suddenly killed by frost become hard and tough.

Consequently, the leaves will sometimes cling to the twigs until the following spring when they are shed largely through the action of wind and rain.

Well, enjoy the carpet of leaves because the carpet will soon turn white with snow.

Bill Bower is a retired Pennsylvania Game Commission Wildlife Officer. Read his blog and listen to his podcasts on the outdoors at www.onemaningreen.com.