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Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

I saw a grizzly bear caterpillar.

It’s going to be a brutal winter.

Still, I was more than happy to share a lovely fall day with the crawler. Folklore says a narrow orange band on a woolly bear caterpillar means a harsh winter and a wide orange band means a mild winter. The truth is that the wider the orange band, the older the woolly bear (also called woolly worm or hedgehog caterpillar, but never a grizzly bear caterpillar). The hedgehog moniker is because it curls up like a hedgehog when disturbed. It grows up to be an Isabella tiger moth.

I enjoy dipping my toe in the ocean called fall. I never know when it’s coming or when it’s leaving. Oscar Wilde wrote, “And all at once, summer collapsed into fall.”

I can tell it’s fall because the air smells of pumpkin spice and a football team mascot’s sweat. It’s an intoxicating mixture. One day, I’ll fill my car with gas containing pumpkin spice.

It’s the time of the year when I amass a vast collection of weedy stickers and burs adhering to my socks because I wear the plants in my family. Fall is when a spiderweb to my face reminds me it’s a spider’s world and I’m just living in it.

Sweater weather sneaks in when we aren’t looking. The temperature drops from 85 to 50, like it was a speeder who had just met a state trooper. Shirts turn plaid. It’s time to switch out the summer pillows for decorative hay bales.

Pumpkins lend themselves to dad jokes. How did the pumpkin cross the road? With the help of a crossing gourd. How do you repair a broken jack-o’-lantern? With a pumpkin patch. What’s the ratio of a pumpkin’s circumference to its diameter? Pumpkin pi. What kind of belt does a pumpkin wear? A squash-buckler. What do you call a fat pumpkin? A plumpkin.

Weather folklore abounds. A warm October means a cold February. As the weather in October, so it will be in March. If October brings much frost and wind, then January and February will be mild.

Much rain in October, much wind in December. Gnats in October are a sign of long, fair weather. Ice in October that will bear up a duck foretells a winter as wet as muck.

Migration gets the wild things moving. Trees turn dazzling colors. Leaves are mistaken for birds and birds are mistaken for leaves. A woman said all the warblers look alike to her in the fall, but she wasn’t sure which one they all look like. We rake up the leaves, so there’s room for the snow. With a powerful leaf blower (equipped with a 376 cubic inch engine that produces the wail of a banshee), we can send leaves to those poor, unfortunate people who have no trees.

We all know someone who, when we get the first snow in the fall, packs his bags and heads south. He didn’t like the rehearsal, so he decided to miss the show. The first measurable snowfall (at least 0.1 inch) falls in Duluth on Oct. 24, International Falls Oct. 20, Marshall Nov. 12, Minneapolis Nov. 4, Rochester Nov. 5 and in St. Cloud on Nov. 2. Mason City gets its first inch of snow on Nov. 22 on average.

Lights splatter across fields as combines and grain carts do a harvest dance. Hope pours into wagons, trailers and bins. Fall is a temporary shield against winter and fans of fall lament its passing before it’s gone. A fall that overstays its welcome is rarer than an elephant with a button nose.

From Edwin Way Teale, who lived from 1899 to 1980, came these words, “On such October days as this, we look about us as though in some new and magic land. The mystical draws close behind the luminous veil. We see the things about us and sense larger meanings just beyond our grasp. Looking back on such a time, we add — as Thoreau did one autumn day — ‘And something more I saw which cannot easily be described.’”

Fall may play a jaunty tune of localized weather events, but it’s merely a pyramid scheme meant to sell more pumpkin spice-flavored plaid shirts.

Al Batt’s columns appear in the Tribune every Wednesday.