MAILING THE LEAVES
by
Dana Bate
A few years ago an actress friend of mine, Lily Knight, moved from New York City to Los Angeles. She wrote that one of the things she missed was seeing the beautiful colors of the Fall foliage season. So I thought it would be nice if I collected some of the beautiful leaves and sent them to her.
I avoided the blanket of colors on the Lion's Park lawn, as tempting as it was, and left the leaves that were still on the trees. I went instead to the only patch of wilderness I know of here in Bristol Borough. It starts from the banks of the Delaware River and runs alongside a marsh land, all of it protected by the Nature Conservancy. There isn't much to it but it's big enough to have a hiking trail through it and it's lush with plants and trees.
I entered near the river at the edge of Lion's Park and soon found myself surrounded by tree limbs and large bushes of many varieties reaching out their branches to greet me with their colorful wares. I soon filled my bag with what I was looking for but kept walking. There are occasional lookouts where one can stop and view the marsh beyond, see the birds playing and listen to them.
The whole journey took about a half an hour but it was a pleasant walk in the forest. Back home I stuffed the leaves in a plastic bag. put it in a box and mailed it to Lily. A bit of Pennsylvania Autumn was on it's way to sunny Southern California.
