RAIN OF LEAVES : AUTUMN

You have come, welcome / Autumn whose paths inspires walks’. So begins a poem by Edip Cansever, and it is true that no season awakens such longing to walk as autumn. Nothing can compare to walking along silent paths carpeted with fallen leaves, the grass glistening after recent rain.
The grasshoppers and cicadas can no longer be heard in the meadows and the swallows, nightingales and buzzards have gone, along with the flowers, transforming nature with a new exuberance. The autumn world is quite different from the brash mood of spring and commotion of summer. It moves the soul silently and profoundly, like a deep river.With the rains of autumn the streams swell from a trickle to a torrent. Lizards, squirrels and bears make ready to retreat into their winter hideaways. Migrating birds gather in flocks for their long journeys south. Leaves fall into the ponds and rock gently on the water like tiny ships. Reflections of golden trees paint brilliant pictures against the last blue of the sky. Autumn’s images inveigle you into irresistible dreams.

Autumn comes to Turkey like a woman combing her fair hair, and is welcomed with colourful sights such as the procession of the Sarikeçili nomads with their flocks and camels descending from the high pastures of Karaman and Mut in the Toros Mountains to the Mediterranean coast. In the gardens of white villas on Istanbul’s islands, gardeners rake up fallen leaves. In the Belgrade Forest north of the city, picnickers enjoy the gentle autumn sun amongst the blazing yellow trees. On the road to Lake Abant red leaves float in the breeze onto the minaret balconies. Axes rise and fall, chopping firewood. In Mardin the plains of Mesopotamia which stretch out beyond the Mor Gabriel Monastery put on their yellow and brown cloaks. The Çoruh River rises in rushing rapids.
Autumn brings its secret urgency to nature as winter looms. The Roman period Kuskayasi Monument marking the ancient road to Amasra in the Western Black Sea region is swathed in a yellow frame. The lizards which basked on the stone in summer now creep into its cracks.

The mediaeval Artukogullari mosque in Hasankeyf bids farewell to the last stork taking wing from its minaret. In the Bolu Mountains, the Istranca Mountains and around Sünnet Lake, families of mushrooms spring up amongst the broken branches and tree stumps.

We mourn the loss of their leaves, but it is the trees’ way of surviving the winter. The leaves which worked so hard as chemical factories during spring and summer producing chloroplast now give up their last chlorophyl to the mother tree. As the leaves turn from green to yellow, from yellow to red, and red to brown, they create a colourful spectacle for us, while saving the tree from unnecessary water loss.Sometimes the dead leaves cling tenaciously to the branches, as in the case of oaks, which wait for the wind to blow them away. Young beeches do not give up their leaves until spring! Even the evergreen pines renew their needles, although imperceptibly, in cycles of between two and seven years.

A notable exception is the black pine, which sheds its needles every winter from fear that the burden of snow might break its branches. Most deciduous trees shed their leaves even before they have dried, forming beneath them the yellow, red and brown carpet of leaves which invite us to take the walks of poetry. This layer of leaves has its own part to play in the complex natural cycle which allows nothing to go to waste. First insects nibble the leaves, to be succeeded by mushrooms and bacteria, reducing them to a rich humus, the legacy of many successive autumns. In this fertile compost seeds flourish into saplings destined to produce new crops of leaves in their turn.

Light is another autumn artist, and at Yedigöller - the Seven Lakes - in the Bolu Mountains paints its brightest canvas. Here the fallen leaves coat the lake waters so thickly, that you might be deceived into trying to walk across them.

To watch the mist floating through the valleys in the early morning, you must climb up to the hilltops. Looking down from Kapankaya onto the beeches, firs, black pines and lakes, you feel like shouting aloud in joy of life. In autumn our emotions find new life, just as the trees prepare for a new phase in their own lives. Of course, to experience this you must leave the treeless cities and head for the mountains. So do not delay, the leaves have begun to drop from the branches to the earth.

By Akgun AKOVA

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