JOY ALONG THE WAY: OCTOBER TURNS ON HER CHARM

October comes in on little moccasined Indian feet and leaves like a whirling gypsy dancer heady with vibrant colors and pungent autumn perfumes.

I fancy I can see where the moccasined feet have trod. Here is a sweet gum leaf plastered flat on the blacktop driveway, its five yellow points spread out as if the walker arranged it precisely before stepping on it to paste it down. A dry broken limb that has fallen across my private pathway has been kicked aside, part on one side of the path, part on the other. By whom? A moccasined foot of course. Farther along, seemingly out of place, is a broken wild aster stem as if someone has carried it for a while and discarded it in favor of a nearby more deeply colored purple ironweed blossom.

We speak of the "color" of autumn, sometimes saying, "It isn't as good as last year," or, "It's better than last year." We're speaking mostly of the trees and shrubs, but the blue skies and the smoky blue haze that hangs over the hills and gray mist on the meadows should be figured in, as well as roadside stands featuring pumpkins, gourds, apples, squash and colored corn.

Sometimes, when I pick up a fallen sweet gum leaf, I feel I have all the colors of autumn in my hand. Here, still near the base of the stem, is a little leftover summer green. It seeps into the yellow of hickory, pawpaw and ginkgo which seeps into red and leaves a colorful orange rim akin to the autumn sassafras. The red travels along the leaf veins in hues ranging from the crimson of the sour gum to the scarlet of sumac, the rust and burgundy of the oaks.

There is one particular leaf of a sweet gum that brushes my head every day as I go to get my mail. Thus I watch it gradually change. Some day, very late in the season I hope, it, too, will be lying on the blacktop driveway, a colorful fare-thee-well until next spring. Maybe there'll be a message scribbled on it saying, if I could but read Indiansummerese, "Forgive the balls to fall later." I forgive, for they contain the wonderful seeds for continuity of this gypsy-dressed tree. But ten million of those seeds! Such profligacy!

I have harvested a suitable amount of Osage oranges and am sticking into one big one the variety of molted bird feathers I find. Suspended from the porch ceiling, it appears to be some sign that silently says, "Voodoo witch doctor here." This, along with my perennial garage hex sign, may scare away any prowlers. I won't put any pins or chicken feathers in the "green" orange. After all, voodoo is a religion, not a sinister caster of spells. We've heard a lot about this since Haiti dominates the news now and Haiti is rich in voodoo.

I've resurrected the old charm string (What! Another superstition!) and found that some of the gourds and hanks of colored corn are looking shabby so I've stripped most of the things from it and started anew. It will be animated when the squirrels and birds come to steal a grain or two and a cricket thinks it has found refuge for the winter in amongst the shucks.

When we are dazzled by October's bright blue skies and golden sunshine, look for the monarch butterflies. They may be right at eye level or high in the sky, moving lazily southward, bits of whirling gypsy dresses come loose from too much dancing. They, too, are a part of October's overall color.

REJOICE!