Grateful for the WHRRRR: Life Lessons From Upper West Side Leaf Blowers

By Yvonne Vávra

Autumn has descended upon the Upper West Side, that most fascinating time of year—leaf blower season, naturally. Not that I like leaf blowers. I very much do not. But they do send my wonder flying, and that I really do love.

It’s thrilling to witness the epic battle of Man vs. Wind. There he is, dutifully blasting a single leaf across the sidewalk, shuffling autumn’s traces a strategic couple of feet away. The leaves swirl off, readying themselves for their whirlwind comeback while the wind whispers, “Nice try.”

Why is this happening? Why tidy up what can’t be tidied? How mean am I to be so cruelly amused by someone’s commendable commitment to keep the sidewalk clean? What grand logic of leaf management am I missing? And, as my ears chime in, how many decibels does it take to accomplish absolutely nothing?

Too many. Noise is annoying, especially when it mixes with the rage that inevitably bubbles up at something that seems so pointless. Leaf blowers are “a metaphor for what’s wrong with us as a species,” Cate Blanchett once said. Actually, more than once. She has been railing against them in interviews for nearly two decades, most recently on Kareem Rahma’s “Subway Takes” show.

But it’s Thanksgiving week, so let’s find the good and some gratitude in all this vroom vroom. Or is it more like a WHRRRR? A NNNNNNNNNNNnnnnnnnn? However we spell it, it’s a message from our neighborhood trees: We’re here. We’re leafy. You’re welcome. All that uproar is a reminder of how lucky we are to have so many trees on our little stretch of Manhattan. A world-famous park on one side, a lesser-known but by many even more cherished park on the other; Morningside Park perched above; trees spilling down Broadway and the avenues; more trees sweeping in from the cross streets; and still more gathering in the tiny parks scattered between them—Damrosch, Roosevelt, West End Towers, Waterline Square, Verdi, Dante, Richard Tucker, Joan of Arc, Straus—surely I’m forgetting a few. But not this one: Septuagesimo Uno, Manhattan’s smallest park, all 0.04 acres of it wedged between two buildings on West 71st between Amsterdam and West End Avenue. And yes, it does have one tree in it.

 According to the New York City Tree Map, there are 11,471 street trees between West 59th and 110th Streets. What a treat to be bothered by leaves.

As mind-blowing as it is — vroom vroom — there’s more to learn from leaf blowers than just gratitude. They can offer philosophical guidance, and I for one am willing to take life lessons from a leaf blower. Watching the spectacle of a problem pushed from one square foot to another, I stare into a humbling mirror: NNNNNNNNNNNnnnnnnnn… we actually apply a lot of leaf blower logic in our own lives. We make noise, expend effort, feel productive, and yet often leave the underlying issues untouched. We shove our little problems around like autumn leaves instead of facing them head-on.

In our apartments, we move clutter out of sight, where it waits patiently for the next move. We archive emails and shuffle messages into carefully labeled folders we never open. We save or print articles to read on a day that never arrives. We trim screen time on one app, only to drift toward a shinier distraction on another. We schedule meetings to discuss our inefficient ways. We buy new storage containers instead of decluttering. We rage about issues and demand change on social media instead of taking real-life action. And — if you’re anything like yours truly — of course we diligently transfer tasks onto next week’s calendar page instead of actually doing the work.

Thank you, leaf blowers, for scattering not just leaves but little reminders that we’ve all mastered the art of appearing productive while merely rearranging our problems.

In a truly unexpected twist, I have no choice but to conclude that leaf blowers are comforting. They remind us that life runs in endless loops, and none of us quite has it all figured out. We huff, we puff, we shift around life’s messes, and the circumstances whisper, “Nice try,” like the wind. Even if our efforts are absurd or futile, it’s reassuring to know we’re never alone in our silly attempts to control the uncontrollable. So this Thanksgiving week, I’m grateful for the small absurdities that make me laugh and wonder about life — WHRRRR included.

Yvonne Vávra is a magazine writer and author of the German book 111 Gründe New York zu lieben (111 Reasons to Love New York). Born a Berliner but an aspiring Upper West Sider since the 1990s (thanks, Nora Ephron), she came to New York in 2010 and seven years later made her Upper West Side dreams come true. She’s been obsessively walking the neighborhood ever since.

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