At year’s end a shiny windless day invited neighbors to track into the new snow.  Green patches marked where a pair of does slept in the storm.  The dirt in their tracks was muddy, warmed by recent rains and a little sunshine.  Only distant traffic, the occasional crack of hunter’s practice rounds and the camera shutter break the quiet.

Even light wind today would have relieved the pines of their easy burden of snow.  A few have branches crippled by the heavy ice and snow of a recent storm.  The fallen trunks and limbs in the adjacent Woodland Conservancy now have been cleared from all but one of its trails.

One day of this year remains and rain is again in the forecast. It’s a good time for indoor projects or just relaxing. The first of the seed and nursery catalogs has reached the reading table but for now the trees and farm will just rest.

He was an old man who raked alone on his suburban lawn and he had gone all afternoon now without stopping for coffee.   His grass was closely-trimmed and green in Detroit’s November, the mowing over for another year. Two dozen metal tines scraped across his sidewalk to bags nearly full with leaves all waiting at the curb for transport.

Fifty years ago diesel tractors stole the Sterling farm’s topsoil to carve these streets and basements.  New owners rolled out thin sod, flooded maple saplings between the curbs and driveways with too much water and began the litany of weed-and-feed, trimming and raking that ensued.  He was there in the first years when toddlers dotted every yard and the parish school blossomed.  While neighbors and their children moved north or west and new ones came his family was rooted here.  He remained after he sold his store and stepped away from its drums and guitars.   Empty bedrooms and now nearly-naked branches marked the turning of the years.

Alone each brown wet or crisp red leaf held its story until, when swept together, its voice disappeared in the rasp of the pile being pulled across the lawn.  The raker’s shoulders and back were tired and showed his age.  Today he did not much care for what the leaves could tell of his neighborhood.  There were no majestic trees here like sycamores with giant leaves larger-than-life even as they fell.   Tall oaks would have held fast most of their leaves until the first snowfall or even later.   Like its people it was a subdivision of maples; soft or hard, crimson, Norway or silver and all-American.

A gust freed more pilgrims to reach ground in the afternoon sun, their labors done.  He stood his rake in the back corner of the shed knowing that tonight a wet snow would blanket them.   Then it would be time to find a shovel but now he would dream of catching a fine fish.