Seeds, Pods and Flower Parts

You must not know too much, or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free margin, or even vagueness--perhaps ignorance, credulity--helps your enjoyment of these things." --Walt Whitman "

It's easy to get excited about Spring. Suddenly, overnight, it seems, trees pop leaf buds. What were yesterday's brown, lacy branches re today's mossy green. The colors are vivid'; the air is surprisingly fragrant. And, if you listen, you would swear the birds have returned. All of this overnight. It is very hard to miss such drama.

Fall, on the other hand, the opposite is happening. Lush green transforms iteslf to brown. This, in ome wans more than any other time, may be the precise moment where the best walks are the ones when you slow your pace and sharpen your eyes. As Fall's transformation is in process, there are gifts to be had fo the observant

My friends have taken to collecting in Fall. We go off with a pocket full of baggies and will stop at the smallest excuse to see what is lying before us. So far we have gathered seefds, pods, flower parts, rocks, sticks and lots of "we're-not-sure-what-this-is-but-it's-'way-cool'"

My own neighborhood happens to have lots of deciduous trees. They have been particularly specacular as their colors changed and it is truly awe inspriing to stop dead in my tracks and just admire the picture. One of my walking companions was pointing out the different varieties of maples on a arecent jaunt--lacy leafed Japanese maples, vine and sugar maples. Did you knw that when you crush the leaves of a sugar maple they smell like incense? And the leaves are from small and delicate to gigantic--large enough for a mouse to sail upon in an animated kids' movie. We've gathered beach tree pods--inch long, chocolate brown, bristly pods which open at the top like fish mouths to drop teardrop shaped seads in 3-D which are so slippery that they are a challenge to pick up!

Then there are the horse chestnuts, dropped from prickly pods, some with full rounds seeds, others with shell-shaped, partieally formed seeds the size of your thumb. I've found crusty walnuts nad spent a morning with two of my favorite kids searching beneath oak trees for acorns with their hats still on--a rare find at this time of autumn. There are rose hips, some orange, others in a dusty pink with light brown veriegated pods. In some neighborhoods, you may find a fasciniatiang star-shaped flower left-over. These are the seeds of the clerodendrum or trichototmum (commonly known as Harlequin or Glory Bower). This flowering shrub, native to Japan, boasts fragrant

clusters of white tubular flowers from August through October/ The calyces, that green part to which the flower actually attaches, remains after the flower wilts. This turns a waxy, bright pink color and ahs a ablue-green prominent seed at the center which deepesn in hue with time. The crushed leaves of the clerodendrum smell like peanut butter.

Cool Finds

"Believe one who knows: you will find something greater in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters." --St. Bernard de Clairvaux

I have one friend who, from time to time, will slow her pace to look for heart-shaped rocks. I think this must be akin to the search for 4-leaf clovers. At first I didn't expect much from the search, but I've now seen one. It's truly amazing to hold in yhour had a perfect hearatshaped stone, a found treasure from amaong the common rocks.

Recently, while on an errand, I found a treasure I've yet to identify. It's the approximate size and shape of a walnut, dark brown on the outside, toast-colored on the inside. The outside is ridged, like a nut, but there is no shell. The inside looks porous, though it is hard; there are no rings or veins. I wonder if I've found the knot hole part of a knot hole? In any event, it sits, for now, on my shlf where I can look at it, pick it up for close inspection and marvel that there are things in my home about which I know very little.

Favorite Places. Time to Play

"In our play we reveal what kind of people we are." --Ovid

Fall is a time for revisiting favorite places. There is a particular house on one of my walking routes with a paved yarad and two stone lions guarding a flagpole. While, on the one had, you have to wonder about a someone who would pave their lawn, you have to give these fols their due for their sense of humor. The lions are always dressed for the season--recenly with huge pumpkin heads for Halloween. I also have a favorite tree that I visit every year in a local state park. Actually, the tree is dead, but the tall, twisting, moss covered remains give a jump-start to the imagination. No matter when I visit, I take time to survey it from all sides to see how it has changed, like an old friend.

When is the last time you went to the playground? No, not for the k ids, but for yourself? Even if you just sit on a swing to see what a child sees, or let yourself swing just a bit--not too high--enough to feel the breeze on your face and remember what you loved aboaut swings when you were six and had just lurned how to pump your legs to go higher.

Or, have you had a game of Poohsticks of late. I did recently with a group of grown up friends--you know: mothers, grandmothers, sisters, wivews of resepectable folk! What you do is each select a stick and, all together, drop them off one side of a bridge. Then you all run to the other side to see whose comes out first. This comes from Eeyore Joins a Game "which Pooh invented, and which he and his friends used to play on the edge of the Forest." At first, it was played with fir gones, but soon gave way to sticks which are much more easily idenified as "yours" or "mine". As respectable folk, we played by the most current rules!

Holidays

"The only Zen you find oan the top of mountains is the Zen you bring up there." --Robert M. Pirsig

Lastly, I confess that I think about ducks on certain holidays. All spring and summer the children are brought with their parents to pondside. Tiny hands extend with seed droplets. A flurry of ducks and coots and water fowl rush hollering to the spot. But, then the cold and the rain comes. No one brings the children. Feeding is left to those few of use with daylight hours to spend on such things. So, on Thanksgiving and on Christmas Days, I buy a bag of duck food and go to find the ducks. There's never anyone else in signt. It has crossed my mind that athe ducks may be grateful for the quiet and the peace such holidays bring. The real truth, is that it makes me feel good to be there. So, I go.

©1998. Ellie J. Hodder
All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited without written permission.

Ellie Hodder is an avid walker and event enthusiast. She has been teaching speed walking programs in the Metro area since 1992. Ellie is founder/director of Women Walk the Marathon®, co-coordinator of the Portland Marathon Walk Clinics and Training Walk series, and the Walking Coach for the Joints in Motion Training Team, a marathon program of the Arthritis Foundation. Hodder earned her masters degree from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and is an American College of Sports Medicine Health/Fitness Instructor.