Hi again and here’s one that’ll eventually appear in a Friday edition of the Wisconsin Rapids Tribune’s Lake Country section.

Smokey the Bear is Watching You!

          The many, many trees at our place are again showing off their glorious autumn golds and reds, which I enjoy as much as anyone. But I still cringe over my first October in Central Wisconsin. I had moved here from Chicago to marry Ruthie in June and now it was four months later.

My bride beside me in the yard, I stood staring at the leaves ankle deep all over the place. “Good grief, sweetie! We’ll need a million leaf bags!”

She laughed, “You poor mixed-up Illinois people. Up here, dear, we get to burn them.”

          I was instantly all smiles at the thought of inhaling the wonderful fragrance of burning leaves, something I hadn’t done in years down at that other place. By sunset we had finished raking and I pictured us soon seated before a cozy fire roasting marshmallows.

Ruthie interrupted my happy thought. “Isn’t your burn pile getting awfully large?”

           Thinking-Nah, she’s worrying about nothing-I waved her off. “I’ve laid out the garden hose and besides, there’s not a breath of air stirring!”

Except? Topping it off with some tinder-dry pine boughs, I had to admit that yeah it was a bit large, but? Supremely confident of my old Boy Scout skills, no big deal.

Lighting some leaves near the bottom, I warned, “Stand back, she might flare up a little!”

Moving back myself, I frowned as it barely burned. “Nuts-too slow!” Impatiently crumpling up some newspaper, I nodded, “This’ll speed it up.”

She waved a hand. “No-no, better not!”

Too late, the dry pine caught and-Whoomph!

I yelled happily, “What fun, I haven’t done this in ages!”

          Not listening, she was staring at the flames leaping higher…and higher. Meantime, so help me, a stiff breeze chose this very instant to kick in. Suddenly burning leaves were spiraling up and drifting merrily toward our neighbors’ woodlot chock-full of dry ones.

Chasing off to smack them down with a rake, she hollered, “Use the hose!”

          As leaping flames were about to turn a nearby pine into an eighty foot torch, I frantically twisted the nozzle and? Out came a measly trickle-low water pressure!

I’d at least had brains enough to clear a large circle around the fire pit and my raging inferno soon consumed itself down to embers. Keeping it that way, we never did get around to roasting those marshmallows.

          It’s gone better since we’ve become, as they say, green conscious. These days we rake some of the leaves protectively over her flower beds and my rows of winter-hardy turnips. Harvested later from under the snow they taste great, by the way. Other leaves either get mower-mulched or stay put ‘til we do it again in the spring.  

Ruthie still lets me have my bonfires, but watches every second so they stay small and then just to roast marshmallows with our grandkids. If I’m urged to see a really big fire, she says, “Fine, Gilbert! If it’ll make you happy, go rent “The Towering Inferno”, OK?”

Which it does, I suppose. Meantime, dear readers, I made up a little poem dedicated to any of us having to deal with leaves;

          When branches are bare

And leaves are lying everywhere,

          Raking is such a care!

          But don’t whine this isn’t fair!

          Merely mulch and lose that despair!

           And if burning is still your fare?

          Watch out for Smokey the Bear!

         

P.S. And if roasting marsh-mallows, don’t singe your hair!