SHH! AUTUMN HAS BEGUN CHANGING HER CLOTHES

Soon I will make my annual October trip into the St. Francois Mountains. Simms, Stono, Shepherd, Buck, Gillman's Hill, Alexander's Hill the names roll off my tongue like an autumn colored string of beads. With each clump of red sumac I pass, each clump of goldenrod, each patch of orangy-red sassafras, my spirits lift until my heart seems to be singing in beautiful notes not on any musical scale.

I know exactly where there is a grove of crimson maples, the likes of which I think do not exist anywhere else in the world. Why, in this particular spot the leaves of the maples are all bright red, yet all around them are maples of various shades of yellow, yellowish-red and reddish-yellow, I don't know. Perhaps those who study soils and rocks could tell me but I like to make up my own stories about it. My favorite one being, that once upon a time the end of a rainbow touched the ground here and all the red soaked into this one spot, making everything that came up thereafter red.

When I had access and permission to this rainbow soaked spot I dug up one of the crimson maple saplings and transferred it to my present yard. It is still crimson in the fall, which blows my story a bit since the soil was changed, but it was "born" in the rainbow spot.

Some of the places I will travel to are not shown on the Missouri Travel Map which points out the interesting places to visit. For instance, nowhere on the map do I find "West's Goat Pasture." But I'll go by to see if the old fence row is still there, marked by a line of rusty wire and goldenrods.

As we approached Loughboro Grade School, in the early days, how could we help but pick a big bouquet of goldenrod for the teacher. Other students had similar ideas and at the beginning of school, the teacher's desk was literally covered with jars of goldenrod. Later in life, passing by that goat fence and seized by a spasm of nostalgia, I gathered for myself a bouquet of goldenrod. Where I later threw out the faded flowers, goldenrod began to grow. I let them. Even fertilized them. Now I tie the great stalks together as one would a wheat shock and have a shock of blooming goldenrod to light up the back flower border.

Few people are still living who know where Alexander's Hill is, but my sisters and I, making autumn travels, know just where to stop on that hill and look up the St. Francis River Valley. From there we can feast our eyes on five ranges of mountains, each a little higher and farther away. The last one, dimly seen, as if a filmy blue veil has been thrown over it, might be up in Iowa for all we know. Anyway, it's farther north and probably needs a shawl by this time of the year.

No map is marked, "Wild Grapes Here." We know the location and will stop to see if the vines have recovered from a roadside trimming made a year or two ago, the trimmers, no doubt, having no sense, that is, no sense about wild grape jelly and food for foxes.

On one map, to my amazement, I did find "Gold Mine Hollow." Of course we called it Gold Mine Holler. Even those who lived nearby the spot, in the early part of the century, didn't know why it was so called. The map doesn't explain. To my mind, the only gold ever found in the mountains that formed that hollow was huckleberries, butternuts, mayapples, blackberries, hickory nuts, black walnuts, burr acorns, etc.

Ever see "Pawpaw Patch" on a map? We know where one is, and if the gate isn't locked we'll go down and sit under the gorgeous yellow umbrella. Pawpaw trees grow in patches, close together and when a bunch of them put on their bright autumn uniforms, it is as if some offspring of Paul Bunyan has raised a yellow bumbershoot. Even on a cloudy day, you think you're sitting in sunshine.

If we sit still long enough, we may see squirrels, chipmunks, an opossum and maybe an old 'coon venturing out in daytime to have a snack.

I may make a one-of-a-kind map some day. One dollar per map. Fifty dollars for a guided tour plus gas, food and lodging for me! Not bad, on a gypsy-colored autumn day to be thinking in term of one to fifty dollars rather than millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions and so forth.

REJOICE!