Today I'm pleased to welcome Stephanie Wardrop and her character, Georgia Barrett
Don’t fear the peeper(s)
An
essay by Snark and Circumstance’s
Georgia Barrett
Autumn
is a big deal in New England. In fact, around here, people practically think
they invented autumn, or, at least,
autumn’s big holiday, Thanksgiving. I’m not a big fan of Thanksgiving. I know
that it is good to be thankful for the things you have, and I am, usually. I am
thankful, for instance, that my mom is finally off my back about making friends
at my new school (and has been downright giddy since the perfectly preppie
Michael Endicott has been coming over to our house.) I am grateful to have met
some cool people at school, finally, who prefer punk to pep rallies, and that I
get to write stuff like this for the school’s alternative paper. But I think there is something inherently
creepy about a holiday that (1) celebrates the white Puritans’ having their
butts saved by the native people that they would soon drive off their own land
and (2) features the carcass of a dead animal as not just the centerpiece of
the dinner table but makes that dinner the whole point of the day. (Well, that
and football).
It’s hard to stick up
for turkeys – they can be pretty unpleasant – but somebody has to.
(This is it, folks:
Plymouth Rock. I don’t live near it, but my mom dragged us to see it one day. I
expected something a little more impressive, didn’t you?)
But
when my family first moved here, I discovered a phenomenon even more disturbing:
They
come by bus, usually in pairs, arriving in the morning so they can hit as many
early bird specials as possible before returning to their southern points of
origin. White haired and wind-breakered,
they wear sensible shoes to provide optimal stalking comfort. Armed with
cameras, they descend on quiet New England towns with a lust born by the
botanical/chemical miracle that occurs when the decomposition of chlorophyll
meets a surge in plant sugars[1].
It’s the
Invasion
of the Leaf Peepers!
I
had never heard of these people who go on “Fall Foliage” tours and descend on
towns like Longbourne with a rabid desire to see some leaves that have changed
color. I wasn’t prepared for the throngs of senior citizens invading the town
green like Vikings descending on a fishing village. I wondered what sort of
people were willing to spend a whole day on an exhaust-spewing bus, touring
from town to town, just to see some brightly colored foliage.
The
first peepers I encountered all but knocked me down on my way to school. Later,
another set of peepers clogged the entrance to Starbucks and I couldn’t get my
iced soy chai in time to run to my English class without being late.
(Apparently leaf spotting requires constant injections of high-grade caffeine
to keep the eyes sharp.)
It’s
just leaves, people, I wanted to yell at them, but that seemed kind of
snotty, so I just wondered where they lived that didn’t have non-deciduous
trees, [2]
and I felt sort of sorry for them.
Because
once I started to look around, I realized that by mid-September, Nature puts on
a pretty impressive display of colors around here.
I started paying more attention as I walked
back home that day. The air was crisp, like biting into one of those really
sweet, really juicy apples you can pick this time of year. I reveled in the crunch of the leaves
under my feet without thinking, as I usually do, that the leaves crunch because
they are dead and that means winter is coming.
(And I hate winter.) I looked up at the
canopy of ochre and russet and scarlet overhead and it reminded me of the
stained glass windows in the church my sister Leigh used to go to, only it was
more beautiful because it was natural and because it would not last. There was
something unbearably lovely in the idea that the display would vanish in just a
few days.
So
now I get out of the way of the peepers.
It’s kind of cool, actually, that the peepers take a day out and get on a bus
just to admire something natural and beautiful.
Most of us are too busy just plowing ahead with our days to notice what’s
around us. So on the one hand, I hope that when I am old and retired I have better things to do than drive around
looking at leaves; on the other hand, I’m starting to think that maybe there is nothing better to do
than that, really. And if I do become a peeper, I swear I will never knock
anyone down. It’s a limited engagement, sure, but for a few weeks, the leaves
are there for everybody. Like so many things in life, you should take care to
enjoy it while you can.
Georgia
Barrett is the narrator of the Snark and
Circumstance e-novella series, a contemporary YA take on Pride and Prejudice, available from
Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo.
Find Stephanie's books on Amazon:
Snark and
Circumstance
(novella 1) on Amazon
Charm and Consequence (novella 2) on
Amazon
Pride and Prep School (novella 3) on
Amazon
Prom and Prejudice, releases in January
Find Stephanie and her characters online at:
The
photo above is by @fitzmulligan and from The MA Insta Foliage site, http://www.massvacation.com/fall/?gclid=CKeyy5zLqroCFRGi4AodOTgAJw
Thanks so much for having me (and Georgia) stop by!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your book with us! It sounds great :)
Delete