Helicopters of Happiness

Our back deck is covered with these, and it makes me happy. It’s a seedpod from a maple tree (penny included for scale), but the syrup connection is not what brings a smile to my face. It's the memories. When you fling such a seedpod into the air it floats down with a gentle spiraling motion. When I was a child growing up in the small town of Ely Iowa, we had a maple tree in our yard and I used to love playing with the helicopters. Over the years I must have spent hours looking for the best ones judged by perfection of form, but mostly by how slowly and gracefully they spiraled their way back to earth after being tossed skyward.  And when the quest for perfection lost its appeal, quantity has a quality all its own.  I distinctly recall gather up bags of these seed pods to dump en-masse off the edge of the nearby railway bridge.  That was big fun for a small kid in a preX-box, tiny town Iowa.

That bridge was a treasure in its own right. The occasional train would pass through, often leaving behind a searing hot flattened penny that some child had left on the tracks.  Standing underneath the bridge while a train thundered overhead was also a popular event. The bridge even spanned a wide, shallow creek that provided great entertainment and relief in the hot and humid summer months. 

These days, I have the pleasure of introducing the kids to the joy of nature’s helicopters.  It just so happens that there is a maple tree right next to the bridges at the end of our street. Fancy that.