That was my request to relatives in the Midwest where Mother Nature's annual brilliant art show is being dissembled by North Wind Inc.
Wouldn't I just love to put on some closed shoes and take a long walk in a place where people have the good sense to get full sensory gratification from the crispy debris of maples and oaks.
Leaf-shuffling is best done in the company of a small child, so you can justify raising a whirlwind and dancing along.
The climax of the Exfoliation Extravaganza Experience is to leap into a heap of raked leaves, which cushion even an exuberant elder's contact with the ground. It helps to have the small child along as a cover for repeating this as a learning experience. But hey, it's excusable conduct, the last romp outdoors before the climate closes in on you.
The sad thing is that most island-born folks are absolutely, constitutionally, maybe even genetically, incapable of enjoying the experience. No, this isn't pay-back for the "locals only" bumper stickers and "small kid times" legends I've endured from every Hawaii friend.
Really, I mean it. If you were born in Hawaii and are older than maybe 8, you can't even understand the concept. Only kids who haven't yet absorbed the pervasive prejudices of their families and cultures may have a slight chance to experience Beautiful Biomass at its best.
Let me prove it to you. Picture your grandmother, whatever your ethnic origins, when a few leaves fell from her lemon tree. What did she do? She swept or raked every one of those disgusting droppings up-off-the-ground-immediately and put them in the trash.
Heck, if it was ti in her yard, she probably pulled the offending leaves right off the plant as soon as they showed a little yellow.
Your father spent hours pampering the flowering trees or vines in his yard. He sampled blossoms as he passed trees in other lawns and parks to inhale the essence. But when the bitty blossoms from the neighbor's tree made a fine frost on his grass, he cursed tree and owner and raked like his life was threatened.
Man or woman, you have worn plucked flowers and leaves hundreds of times in your life, as a lei, in your hair, tucked behind your ear. The experience - which people all over the globe envy - the feeling of being romantic, exotic, downright gorgeous as you are wrapped in blossoms, has been yours.
But let that Beautiful Biodegradable drop to the ground and you become a hunter-killer. It's ugly, it's gotta go, it's interfering with the Earth's progress around the sun. IT IS RUBBISH!
No matter how urban their lifestyle, every island resident lives within earshot of the Saturday morning yardwork job by a 1990s cutting-edge crew with a power blower. Older folks might yearn for the good old quiet days when their predecessors had the time and energy to wield a bamboo rake, or even palm branch whisk. But peaceful though those days were, the same philosophy prevailed:
The minute nature takes its course with any living, growing, vegetable-matter thing, and it falls to the ground, it is evil. It is bachi. It reflects on the family honor. It is not to be tolerated. IT IS RUBBISH!
I'm not just speculating, it's all around me every day. While my lawn mower is still whirring, my neighbor lady is sweeping those bitty blades of grass off the driveway. If I'm lucky, none of them blew onto the neighbor man's car. If they did, sigh, I'm in for another scolding. I'm sure my concept of a yard as an overgrown and shedding bird sanctuary just drives them nuts.
My friends in Hawaii Kai planted a white rainbow tree in their backyard for shade and to divert their gaze from the neighbor's abomination, a formerly prolific lime tree that is now trimmed to bonsai configeration. My friends like the tree so well, they put another shower tree in the boulevard. Not only do passersby scoff and question their judgment, they actually had a threatening phone call about it!
And then, there are those tall shower trees at the Board of Water Supply Pacific Heights pumping station which I pass weekly. They are mutilated annually by people who have the gall to call themselves landscapers. It's routinely done before their time of glory. My friend nearby was told it's done because people have complained about "the rubbish." Translation: that's city folk talk for falling blossoms.
In this age when we have embraced biodegradeable as good, when it's a selling point for manufactured products, when composting is trendy, when mulch is bought by the bag to make dirt better. . .wouldn't you think people would get it?
Let nature take its course and those leaves and blossoms will melt right into the soil. That's what bio-degrade-able means.
Anyone who complains about how much hotter it's getting ought to look around at all the trees . . . that are missing. When dry weather dehydrates your yard, you know what helps? The same kind of blanket that keeps forests alive for centuries, a moisture-holding blanket of leaves.
OK, I do know the difference between a climate where the leaves turn crisp instead of rotting into a slimy, slippery threat of a fall. But that reminds me of a solution from yesteryear. There was a warning sign that would reappear annually on the Iolani Palace grounds. I always considered it downright poetic: "Pathway is slippery when blossoms are falling."
I wish I'd taken a picture of it. Now they just tell you to "Keep Off the Grass.''