A natural playground

Their cheeks reddened by the nippy air, the two boys rolled around in the leaves just like their father had when he was a boy.

“It’s a hoot,” Kelly Risse said as he watched his sons, 1-year-old Luca and 2-year-old Mateo, tromp knee-deep through a hill of leaves. “There’s nothing better than a pile of leaves.”

Fun was free for the having Saturday at the Spokane Parks and Recreation Department’s Fall Leaf Festival at the John A. Finch Arboretum.

Dozens of children attacked a giant hill of leaves with gusto as their parents snapped pictures and learned about composting.

Kids buried themselves and one another in the gold and amber leaves.

They tossed armloads of leaves into the air and yipped as the foliage fluttered back to the ground like party confetti.

Michelle Bledsoe, of Spokane, has brought her 4-year-old daughter, Sydney, to the Fall Leaf Festival since the girl was a baby.

“She had a blast,” Bledsoe said. Every year they come back to walk around the arboretum, take in the fall colors and play in the leaves.

Bledsoe and husband, Dan, drank coffee as Sydney ran to the top of the leaf pile and hopped back toward her parents. Leaves stuck to the girl’s blue pants and to the palms of her hands.

“I like to jump in them,” Sydney said. “Roll in them. Throw them around.”

When Heather Adams heard about the big pile of leaves at the Fall Leaf Festival, she saw it as an opportunity to introduce her 4-year-old daughter, Piper, to the fun of leaf-jumping.

Piper rolled down the side of the leaf hill, kicked some leaves and then threw them into the air.

Adams said there’s one advantage to playing in the leaves at the Fall Leaf Festival: “We don’t have to clean it up.”