The rites of fall

On the opening weekend of the Petaluma Pumpkin Patch's annual run through the season to Halloween, Robert Cuellar of Los Angeles stood at the entrance to the patch's famous corn maze doing something likely to be repeated thousands of times in the next month or so.

"I'll give you a hint, Bobby," he said into his cell phone Saturday. "It's not along the left, it's before the left."

Cuellar, 38, said he flies up every year to visit friends, and the calendar of to-do's always includes the pumpkin patch between Stony Point Road and Highway 101.

Cuellar was guiding a friend from Arizona who joined the annual visit.

"If you get all the way to the end, it's too far," he said. "It's more toward the middle, if that makes sense."

Within the maze it was easy to see why it wouldn't.

Inside the tall corn rows, the September day's heat was slightly lessened, the rumble of traffic dampened. Above, only the blue sky; below, slightly fragrant earth crunching underfoot and narrow, many-cornered aisles of tall green stalks.

Thousands visit the patch each year, but Saturday the hay-bale mountain and Jumpy-Jump were empty. Just a few people wandered the maze and through the nearby pumpkin field, a gray dirt expanse strewn with the big orange orbs.

Southbound traffic on Highway 101 -- which at this time of year often turns into a crawling parade of rubberneckers whose attention is grabbed by the 16-year-old patch -- was moving smoothly. Things were off to a slow and easy start.

A man on the far side of 50 parked a wheelbarrow of pumpkins by the cashier but was called back to the field by his wife. "I'm not gonna buy five or six pumpkins, for chrissakes," he said. "Where the hell are you going to put them?"

Soon he was trudging back with another pumpkin in hand.

The patch is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays and until 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.

You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at at 521-5212 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com.