On these exceptionally still days I go to the copse by the marsh to listen to its subtlety one more time. You have to work to pick it out behind the blackbird commotion or the jay screech: a snick as a stalk breaks free and the leaf lullabies down.
Often there is also the patter of its zigzag tumble through the branches and then a quiet rustle once it settles among the trees’ heap of old clothes. The summer woods are disrobing, and you can hear them do so one leaf at a time.
It is apt that in India they eat food off leaves, because leaves feed the whole planet. Ponder this Devonian miracle, if you will, and not just its 400m-year-old architecture but also the fact that terrestrial plant life covers 75% of the Earth’s land surface.
Each year it produces half the estimated 105bn tonnes of photosynthesised biomass (the other half is the work of marine phytoplankton). And then each leaf blows out all summer long the oxygen we need, and sucks in the carbon breath we don’t.
Even dead leaves give us what Victor Hugo defined as the usefulness of beauty. In a tree-lined park recently the cast foliage lay in separate stripes as if an artist had blown different coloured paint powders between the tree trunks.
There were biscuit-toned poplar leaves, the tanned leather of maples, the dying coals of fallen beech. Between these muted shades were two lines of Ginkgo leaves.
Also known as the maidenhair tree, it is a Chinese import and the last of its kind on Earth. Not a single ginkgo leaf was anything but unalloyed dull gold. The oak trees remained a fierce standing brazier of orange and the horse chestnuts were caught halfway. The dropped foliage formed a copper circle; the retained stuff was yellowing with last green fingers on lower boughs.
There’s a final pleasure to autumn woods in which we can play an active role. All the extravagant crunch comes from the leaves, but the rhythm of their music is shaped entirely by our footfall.
