There’s a mild term of endearment for Non-New Englanders as that come up to see the foliage change every fall season. They are imaginatively called “Leafers”. This is something I never really appreciated as a Massachusetts native until very recently.
I cannot remember how I got there. Last I could recall I was driving up 91 North to Greenfield to run some errands. I guess I must have gotten distracted and kept on driving. It happens. You get lost in your head for too long on a quiet highway, pass by an exit, life moves on.
But I’ve never blacked out on a main road and come to crossing a bridge into a place I’ve never been to before. All I can think of is how beautiful the leaves were and suddenly I’m coasting through what appears to be an old mining town that never died. Houses littering the streets like tombstones in an abandoned cemetery, each with their own distinct shade of rot, clutter and faded debris adorning its structure. Despite the varying degrees of decay, each single floor double-wide and two story colonial seemed to proudly present at least two prominent features indicating recent activity:
First, a stale and sun-stained satellite dish, in some cases several; affixed like pale gray antennae protruding from peeling shingles and browning crabgrass. Either an indicator that life never progressed past the nineties, or that the region was so signal-averse that you needed the extra boost just to be connected to the outside world.
The second and more bewildering of the two, a wooden symbol hanging from each house. Sometimes on the front door, or above a garage where a basketball hoop would typically hang. A warped, chiseled bearded face made of leaves with horns encircled in a dark maple mount. They looked hand-cut, each with its own unique features. Some with more human features, and others more blended into some sort of tree-like entity. The painstaking craftsmanship speaks more to a communal, cultural meaning rather than a popular local artist. They successfully made me feel like I was being watched in a place where I had yet to see another living human being.
After getting a sobering jingle from my gas gauge, I am able to coast into what could only be considered the town center by title alone. A faded, scuffed gas station nestled between what seemed to be a closed post office, a general store, a used car lot and a breakfast nook. Barely a dozen parking spaces available for all five businesses.
Stepping out of my car to check the pump, I am temporarily stunned. The moment my head leaves the vehicle and fully enters the crisp mountain air, there is a serene noise enveloping the area. I know I’m minimum three hours away from any kind of body of water but I swear it sounds like I”m hearing the ocean. Waves gently crashing on a nearby shore. After a couple moments of adjustment I realize it’s the trees. The slow winds are making the millions of leaves convulse like alveoli in a fresh set of newborn lungs. Ebbing and flowing, churning and pausing in a dizzyingly gentle display. I should on all counts be out of my mind with anger and confusion, but I struggle to even furrow my brow at such a beautiful fall day.
I stow my appreciation to the back, of my mind and enter the fuel station. Cash only, I’d be shocked if it wasn’t. As I step inside I see the first human being all morning, a gruff and jagged thirty-something in oil-stained coveralls, apparently pulling double duty at the car lot as a mechanic.
“Excuse me, can I get twenty on the pump?” I slap the green bill on the freshly oiled wooden counter.
“Sure Can.” The clerk replies, barely making eye contact, the money already snatched up and into the register. I muster a follow-up:
“Hey, uh, any chance of a Wi-Fi password around here?”
A pause.
“Huh, not immediately no. You’ll have to go back closer to the highway for that. Mineral deposits in the surrounding mountains and high tensity power lines make this region a dead zone. You get used to it, though.” The clerk motions to a small television with a 1980’s sheen over the screen, some kind of public access channel coming from god knows where. A person looking like a preacher of some kind talking, but I’m too distracted to make out any of the finer verbiage.
“You passing through I take it?” The clerk catches my drifting attention and snaps me back to task.
“Oh, uh, yeah, I guess so. Beautiful day for a drive. Never been through here before.” I over-explain to hide my embarrassment.
“Yeah, this time of year out-of-towners swing by to watch the leaves change. Can’t complain about it though. Little extra commerce, you know? And hey, we got the Ragshag Parade happening today, too…should be passing by any minute.” The clerk catches me off-guard with how casual he is. Like he’s had this conversation a hundred times already.
“A Ragshag parade? Today? Wow, I don’t think I’ve seen one before.” I genuinely don’t think I have.
The clerk replies “Yep, looks like it’s yer lucky day, go out to the street and enjoy it after you gas up. I gotta step out back for a minute but you’re all set on the pump. Scream if you need anything.”
I look outside, almost as if I’m missing it, realize there’s nothing happening outside and correct myself. “Okay, thanks!” But he’s already gone. A hastily folded piece of paper on the counter with the words “Back in 5” scrawled on it is now presiding over the small shop interior.
I exit back out into the embrace of the pale yellows and shimmering reds dotting the sky like perpetual fireworks. The warm shades bouncing off the light blue backdrop of the earth make it feel like I’m wading through a Bob Ross painting. The hum of natural static in the air nearly freezes me in place for a moment, catching me mid-stride. I feel like a puppy who just had the back of its ears scratched for the first time.
I take a moment and stop, look up at the trees and just, sway for a minute. Existing. Enjoying the feeling of being swaddled in a ball of calm embrace as the world swirls around me. One beat, two. Four. I lose count. And then I snap out of it.
Come on, focus! I should be furious. I’m nowhere close to where I’m supposed to be, I have to lock in and get out of here.
I finish up at the pump, and as I move to get back into my car, I catch in my periphery; people. Several, in fact. I presume they’re lining up on the side of the road for the parade the clerk mentioned. But it’s… disorganized. There’s no proper sidewalk on the road, so there are cars just…parked on the side as potential driving hazards. Some even have blinkers on. As I’m clocking the cars, I’m noticing the plates. Connecticut. Rhode Island. New York. Pennsylvania. Maryland. Virginia. Ohio. I might be the only one in a five mile radius that actually lives in this state here today.
And then my eyes readjust to the people I thought were looking to the street are… looking up? Are they watching the leaves too, like I just was? Two, six, twelve, twenty…. Looking both ways down the road I can see maybe seventy people, all standing like they are listening to someone talking in the sky. And…they’re all…swaying? Even in my confusion and recognition, I find myself struggling to move. I feel so, comfortable. Safe…
And then I hear it.
Drums. I mean, REAL drums. I don’t mean the innocent dancing of epoxied sticks on sterile plastic. I hear shileleghs battering stretched animal skin, held by weathered hands carrying rhythms that have not been heard in generations, maybe longer. No accompaniment, no joyous or raucous singing, no clapping, no dancing. Just… hammering percussion. I still can’t see it but I can sense it’s coming down the bend, I can already feel the bursts of noise bouncing off my chest.
And then I see it.
I’m not even sure how to describe it. It’s a display seemingly plucked out of time. Silent, yet deafening. Masks made of old fabric, moldy burlap, bleached antlers, rust-stained metal. Hand-sewn, patchwork over shirts, layers of shorn furs draped over fresh swatches of dried blood. I barely recognize the forms as human.
They move less like a parade and more like a funeral march, amassed in a shambling frenzy. Silent, all but the pounding, punishing blows of blackthorn on tensioned, bald pelts. Bodies almost limping forward, adorned with trophies of the old times, bone and sinew, glass and herbs. I can’t make out a face yet, but they are trudging closer.
I want to run, but it’s as if my body is paralyzed. It’s…swaying? Dear god, am I really swaying right now? Am I trapped in my mental euphoria so strongly that I can’t be bothered to leave it, even in the face of certain threat? My muscles tesnse and seize trying to break from this hypnotic daze, this momentary safehouse now turned into an asylum. They are getting closer.
My god, they…the parade is walking past the people and…taking them… a rap on the head, an extended grasp, and they practically disappear into the roiling mass of feral flesh. Please tell me this is a nightmare. Please, make this stop. I have to move.
They are mere yards away. I can smell them. It’s like ammonia and fetid rot, cutting through the intoxicating air. One of them approaches me. An amorphous mask, caved of wood, horns. Eyes. I can see the eyes, nearly bulging out of the pine splinters… a mangled branch is raised and in this moment I snap back. I move. I stagger back, making a kind of garbled scream. My breath catches in my gullet and I struggle to both inhale and vomit simultaneously.
The form stops as I move. And the parade shambles by.
I can only hear static. The dying static in the breeze, I scatter back to my car like a new born deer, injure myself getting into the driver’s seat, turn the key and peel out onto the road, away from the parade.
I’m not even sure if what I saw was real, or some sort of hallucination.
All I know is that I am going back home. I manage to backtrack my way to highway, and as I cross the bridge I first passed over, I can’t help but glance over my shoulder and see an apple tree orchard, lined with saplings, all looking suspiciously human… looking up to the sky, with branches and leaves adorning their forms. Swaying.
As I reaffix my sights on the road ahead of me, I notice a single growth, a leaf, protruding from the first knuckle on my right hand.
I can still hear the static.
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If you are reading this, THANK YOU!
This is the humble beginning of a secret project that probably won’t see completion until late 2026. But in the meantime, let me know what you think of it? Was it too long? Too wordy? Confusing? Not confusing enough?
Let me know!
