Sinnamahoning in October

I was in the car with my parents. I was young, maybe seven or eight. We were going north for a long, fall weekend. The trees had turned, and the beauty was difficult to take in. I remember the fronts of stores that were colored like the leaves- reds and yellows. It seemed that whatever they sold in those places must have been wonderful, for the fronts of the buildings shimmered in the October air, colors hanging just above the surface, unreal and stunning.

We labored away in our car toward our camp near Sinnamahoning. Each mile closer was part of a fragile promise that we would make it. The old, blue Plymouth had seen better days, but somehow it got us there. My sister and I, our father and mother, our dog, Smokey. We poured out into the cool, wet air, there among the ash, birches, and maples. I would spend the weekend gathering leaves and my mother would iron them between sheets of waxed paper.

There were streams as cold as forever. If you put your bare feet into the water, they would ache awfully for a few minutes. The dog lapped from every rill, as if she was obliged to put her nose into each noisy, little stream. One time she saw a native brook trout before I did and jumped directly into a pool after it. When we got back to the camp, my father made me dry her off, and then she stretched in front of the iron stove until her fur was almost too hot to touch.

At night I always tried in vain to stay awake and listen for bears. I wanted to see a bear more than almost anything does in the world. I fought sleep, sat up and created thoughts that taxed my mind, listened until it hurt, and found myself waking to the thin light of October morning, the camp full of breakfast coffee. I never saw a bear. It was the only thing amiss up there in the woods.

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I kept my ironed leaves under the couch when we got home. I took them out after the first snowfall and laid them out carefully on our snow-covered porch. The reds and yellows and oranges sang like a song on that white blessing. I remember them being so beautiful that I almost cried.

(Sinnamahoning is a small town in North Central Pennsylvania built on the site of an old Seneca Indian village of the same name.)