Crimson and gold cascade down the hill, forming a bristling canopy of color to envelop our campus in an inescapable autumnal energy. Mousy, dimmer leaves lay scattered across the pavement. They give way to a passing footfall in a somber crunch. They rustle listlessly on their own, intimating the passing of a squirrel or, more than likely, a gorgeous Somerville rat. The fall of the leaves is decidedly upon us.
In the name alone, the season of autumn is distinguished by a single biological process and wondrous phenomenon: the falling of deciduous tree leaves. It is remarkable that three months of our year are demarcated by this beautiful oddity — by the silent, brittle fireworks of broad-leaved trees. Given these slow, trying times, I find it best to search for simplicity. For a moment, let us become fall leaves — relish in the jubilant majesty of fading into a restful silence and consider those questions most pertinent to us: Why do humans find autumn leaves beautiful?
Maybe it’s first easier to interrogate existence — the biological meaning of fall leaves has a great deal of certainty. The ‘fall’ of fall is a necessity, as leaf tissue is too sensitive to survive winter without freezing; thus, deciduous trees simply allow connective tissue and veins to seal off during colder nights. Losing chlorophyll in the process of separating from the tree reveals carotenoid and anthocyanin, which, by the traditional explanation, produces shades of yellow, orange, bronze, red and purple. However, this ‘falls’ short in elucidating the full brilliance of autumn leaves — trees stimulate anthocyanin production by trapping sugar in leaves, suggesting some purpose behind their chromatic dazzle.
An explanation that I find particularly whimsical is that leaf coloration is actually a form of “plant-insect communication,” whereby trees visually dissuade herbivorous insects from making their cozy leaf homes in leaves that are ready to fall. Trees are not pure altruists, as they don’t ward off aphids with crimson and yellow warning signs for the sole purpose of preventing them from meeting their tiny insect deaths — fewer aphids also result in fewer minute mouths to feed and thus less loss of nutrient-rich sap. While the poets among us may find that fall foliage speaks to them, aphids and other insects can only truly make this claim: Every red leaf is a rustling stop sign.
Through death, leaves sustain the world around them, just as they sustain their host tree in their departure. The rich humus that roots the entire forest and the microbial food chain of streams is fed by the mortal charity of trees. Pagans find such cycles to be a formulation of reincarnation, as the death of the physical and spiritual does not portend death entirely — corpses continue life in the birth and reanimation of new forms. There is a stoic power in the silent, willing death of autumn leaves, as loss becomes accepted, necessary and willing. The ephemeral foliage is beautiful in form and in the sacrifice it embodies.
Takushima Norimitsu was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1943 and eventually died as a kamikaze pilot. In his diary, he feared that he had been “left behind by the times only to die like a shriveled-up leaf.” With our infinite frailty and mundanity, how could he know his life differed from that of an autumn leaf? Sacrifice gains meaning through the brilliance of color that precedes it. Autumn ‘leaves’ me empowered.
