I’ve always thought Labor Day was misnamed.  The last thing I want to do that time of year is celebrate my labor.  I’m tired by early September – and the heat just makes things worse.  So this Labor Day Weekend, leaving our toils behind, we set out for an all-day trip to nowhere.  As long as we made it back for the Razorback football game that night, I was good.

We met up with my husband’s father, another good friend and another couple just as the sun was  coming up, determined to get going before the heat might force us off the road.  Our self-appointed navigator is a born-and-raised Northwest Arkansan, so we fell in line behind his Harley and started out from Fayetteville.

The general idea was a trip through Newton County to do some highways quite popular among cyclists. Highway 7 and Highway 123 were our destination.  The first hour or two of our ride took us through small towns, some beautiful rural areas with tree-covered hillsides, sprawling farms and tiny churches with interesting signs like “We use duct tape to fix everything.  God used nails.”  A quick biscuit and a fill-up in Huntsville got us on our way.

By mid-morning, we decided to stop at a bend in the road called Fallsville.  The small gravel lot had a lone white building with a single glass door, and three old-timey gas pumps.  No credit card swiping here.  You’re gonna have to go in, which was our intention anyway.  We needed a stretch.

We discovered the only available bathroom didn’t require a key – outhouses apparently don’t need that much protection.

As we laughed about this, I noticed an old pick-up truck sitting under a tree.  An overall-clad gentleman was perched on the edge of the passenger’s seat with the door standing open.  Sprawling around the truck were piles of plump green-striped watermelons.  I didn’t need a cutting to know they’d been picked at the height of their juicy glory.  I decided to wander over.

Gentleman Gene, as I think of him now, broke into a smile at the prospect of a buyer approaching.  “How’s business,” I said, curious if he had – or if he really expected – to sell any melons that day.  “They’re beauties, and better than anything you’ve ever put in your mouth.”  No doubt a convincing argument to anyone other than a motorcyclist.  “You raise pretty melons,” I told him.

He got up out of his seat and leaned on the side of the truck.  The entire bed of the truck was filled with dozens more. “I’m just trying to get whatever I can for them today,” he went on.  “They’re not mine, they’re my neighbor’s.”

As I was to learn, Gene was a proud farmer himself who just couldn’t stand the thought of letting perfectly good watermelons rot in the field.  That morning he had driven over to his neighbor’s house and convinced him to let him load up his truck and come down to the gas station to try to find a home for as many as possible.

Why wouldn’t your neighbor bring them himself, I asked him.  Seemed like a strange thing to do, loading up your neighbor’s bounty and hauling it off.  Was his neighbor lazy, tired of eating melons, tired of giving them away?  His answer caught me off guard.  “He’s just not up to it this year.  He’s got cancer pretty bad.  He’ll never make another harvest.  This is his last crop.”

A new appreciation for the melons flooded over me, and their natural beauty just shone.  Gorgeous shades of green, smooth round skin, plump centers.  Just the way they were at rest on top of each other looked as if someone had carefully placed each one in a certain spot to catch the morning’s light through the trees.

Gentleman Gene went on to tell me about his neighbor.  An interesting guy who had lived off the land his whole life.  A farmer, he reaped what he sowed and scraped together enough along the way to feed and clothe 14 children.  An experienced chef after a fashion, he had taught all the women in the area to make homemade sorghum molasses, Gene grinned.  “I think the most he ever made in a year was $1,200.  Some of it from his melons.”

No doubt.

Our conversation was interrupted by the sound of a motorcycle engine starting up.  I looked past him to our group.  They were putting helmets back on and folding up maps.  Time to get going again.

I thanked Gene for his story and apologized again for not being able to take anything with me.  They don’t make saddle bags big enough for melons, I explained.  “But I want you to do something for me,” I said.  “Tell your neighbor someone thought his melons were beautiful, and that he does good work.”

Gene laughed.  That will make him smile, he said, “and I haven’t seen him smile in a long time.”

As we rode away, I thought about fall, but not with the welcome anticipation I’d felt that morning.  Harvest is a time of plenty but it’s also a time of endings.  Maybe it’s because I’m in my 40s now, but only recently have I begun to think about things winding down in life.  I’ve always been wound up.  But of course there is a time of harvest that comes for us all.  The real question is what are you harvesting?

Gentleman Gene had done his neighbor a favor, but he’d done one for me too. It may be a last crop, but it won’t be one that’s forgotten.

There’s something entrancing about the dance of the leaves of fall, especially if you are lucky enough to live someplace where fall is an actual season and not a weekend event.

Fall in the Boston Mountains of Northwest Arkansas comes just when you can’t take one more day of 90-plus heat and humidity, when your car AC can’t work hard enough, and when you start to think there might be something to global warming after all.

Then, mercifully, one September morning there is a cool mist that settles on the fields, a noticeable chill in the air at night, and a wind that comes up along the hillside whistling gentle songs in the back of your consciousness.

The magic of the leaves starts with color.  Right at the tops of the branches, green slowly gives way to scarlet, vibrant orange, or vivid yellow.  Over the course of a few weeks, you can almost track the earth’s tilting by the way the colors migrate from some of the grander maples around town, down through their branches and along the roadside to smaller trees of all kinds.  Different colors for different trees, but very few are left unpainted by late October.

As grand as color is, it’s the way fallen leaves dance that entrances me most.  Flying down the back roads and highways on our bike of choice (BMW K1200 RS), it’s as if they rise up to meet us even before our tailwind catches them.  An unseen wind seems to appreciate our mutual search for speed and adventure, racing toward us across a field and swirling up a tumbling wave of painted leaves just as we cross its path.

I am mesmerized by their movement.

So it is not surprising that my husband and I found ourselves many a night this fall with maps spread out across the kitchen table plotting weekend rides.  We couldn’t stay away from the lure of the leaves.

Apparently we were not the only ones who couldn’t kick the habit.  As I learn more about motorcycling, I have discovered that I live in one of the most beautiful places in the central United States for riding.  During our many escapes this past fall, we met riders from Texas, Kansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Missouri and I’m sure many other places I never asked about.

All had come for a quick weekend Arkansas riding fix – to maneuver the hairpins of the Pig Trail, or follow the crooked highways of Newton County, to stop in Eureka Springs or Hot Springs for a meal or a massage, to get to the top of Mount Magazine or the bottom of the Buffalo River waterways.  Where you ride doesn’t really matter.  It’s that you get to ride that counts.