I like raking. It’s invigorating, satisfying, and it smells good. I don’t rake anymore because I don’t have a lawn, and besides a number of my fellow citizens on this lot aren’t done with the leaves—invertebrates, chiefly, and them what eat them.
But I’m aware how cranky people get about the task. Strike up a conversation with a raker, you’re liable to get a precise breakdown of what percentage of raked leaves are theirs. The rest come from a whole ‘nother tree that isn’t even on their property. Leaves that aren’t even their fault, but they have to rake them anyway, because some people have no sense of boundaries. I don’t know how this horrible situation can be resolved, but I’m guessing an impartial judge might determine that, all other things being equal, the irritable raker owes the tree-owner for the carbon sequestration, beauty, and shade.
At least you can have a conversation with a person raking. The leaf-blowing brigade is probably equally annoyed with the neighbor’s leaves, which is rich, considering how many of their decibels are landing in yards up to a mile away.
I do like me a good raker, though, and that is why my day was made when we were hiking in Forest Park the other day and came across a thoroughly damp trio of them, rakes in hand, grinning in the rain. Forest Park is huge and jammed with trees, as you might guess, and you’d think that might discourage a soul from raking, but these souls are the hardy variety.
Forest Park is an eight-mile-long slab of mostly unmolested old forest hanging off the Tualatin Mountains just west of Portland. It was somebody’s good idea in the mid-nineteenth century to preserve it—although by that point most of it had been logged for development. Anyone seeking to build on it soon discovered its stripped slopes had a way of getting away from them. It’s slick out there and has more gravity in it than some places. There’s only a little bit of old-growth left, but the younger stuff is pretty too. There’s no leaf shortage, but still it seems like the very definition of a place that doesn’t need raking. And yet here they are, good folk with rakes and Travis tools in hand. These people are a triple threat: they can rake and laugh and not get paid, all at the same time.
They’re not just strangers committing random acts of tidiness. They’re volunteers for the Forest Park Conservancy, fully trained and authorized to work independently, and subject to background checks, Missy. And they rake the trails for the same reason people quit trying to glue houses to the slope 150 years ago. It’s slick. Leaves trap water and soil erodes. Before long the place is likely to abscond with your shoes and mud your butt shut. They rake trails—all 47 miles of them—in order to keep them in a condition that even non-salamanders can walk on. It seems daunting, but many hands make lighter work, and the Conservancy trains volunteers in trail maintenance and hosts raking parties on a schedule. Yes, Mrs. Urban Not My Tree, it’s a party! They’re having way more fun than you are. Volunteers’ pronouns are always “We,” and they’re that much happier for it.
There’s obviously a lot to do, though, so after a brief bit of chitchat, our crew was right back to work. And no wonder. It’s a big park. The sword ferns still need ironing, and that moss isn’t going to mop itself.
My Uncle Al lived in Vermont and was a trail volunteer. He would go out with a team of folks and clear out fallen timber and other tasks to keep the trails open for hikers. I might not have this exactly right, but I remember him telling us how in one place, there was a wash-out which they built up by laying branches and boughs over it, then piled stones on top. The result, he said, was a stone path that bounced when you walked on it. He found this delightful.
On one visit, we hiked the Robert Frost trail near Middlebury. It’s an easy walk with stops along the way for poems, which must be read out loud, taking turns with the others in our group.
Sweet!!!!
I’d love to walk the Robert Frost trail someday. There must be roads that diverge in a yellow wood, and at least one road less travelled.
I wonder how that bouncy stone path holds up. I’m visualizing all those salamanders down below the branches with their adorable little fingers in their earholes yelling “Keep it down up there!”
Our national parks and wildlife refuges would dry up and blow away if we didn’t have volunteers! Bless them, one and all.
My impression is that 1/4 of government workers in New Zealand work in trail maintenance. Probably not, but it’s darn tidy over there and trails all over the place.
We have a lot of trees in our yard, but we don’t rake. I did away with the lawn long ago, and the leaves decompose and make more soil. The leaves in our driveway, we just run over with our cars until they break down. Then they go into the compost. Paul does use a leaf blower, but not very much, and only to get leaves off our front walk and paths, and into our yard where they can break down.
I always have said that no one rakes leaves in a forest, to excuse us for our lack of raking. I now stand corrected. (Or actually, sit. Maybe even slouch a bit.)
You slouch corrected.
I couldn’t do that job! I get achy just sweeping my tiny one bedroom place. I’m hurting just thinking about raking 47 miles of forest trail.
I do rake a little each autumn and dump the leaves on my garden to break down and hopefully improve the soil there.
It’s more than just those three folks doing those 47 miles, I assure you.
Love “random acts of tidiness” and” It’s slick out there and has more gravity in it than some places.” Bless them that rake for we all shall be grateful as we stomp our mucky vibrant soles along the trails…….!
Stomp, shlorp, shluck.
Free exercise, too!
The raking of leaves will always remind me of the aroma when my dad raked the yard and then burned the pile of leaves he made. Maybe my favorite smell EVER. But I can’t do that here, any more than one can burn the leaves in the forest.
I wrote an early essay on just that very thing, the fragrance of burning leaves. It was a golden time. Even indoors the atmosphere was 40% Viceroy.
I’ve got a neighbor who’s in love with his leaf blower. His yard is smaller than mine. I can rake my entire yard on a leafy day in about two hours, which includes mulching and wheelbarrowing leaves down to the woods. He’ll spend an entire morning on his entire tiny patch of green.
I think his identical twin brother lives across the street from me.
We use a leaf sucker, not a leaf blower. Electric. Shreds the leaves which then get dumped into the composter or over bare spots in the back.
Who makes this wondrous thing? I have too many leaves to let lie.
Here in suburban NJ we are inundated by the plague of gas-powered leaf blowers wielded by “landscaping” companies that basically just mow lawns in the summer and remove leaves in the fall. Nobody rakes their own leaves anymore, including us. I used to actually enjoy it; it was kind of Zen. But now we finally hired a landscaping guy since we’re away most of the summer. He’s the son of a neighbor who started his own business. I don’t think he uses the loud leaf blowers and he doesn’t blow the grass clippings like some of them do. The noise gets really out of hand and they show up on the dot of 8 AM!
I’ve thought that there should be a market, in certain communities, for human-powered landscaping services. A minority of clients would choose them, but they’d be loyal and self-righteous, which really seals the deal.