Thoughts on the Passing of the Seasons

Drifting so silently we play wasting the hours,
Warm in our knowledge of yesterday’s passing.
We’ve met on the hilltops and parted near mountains,
And we touched without feeling beneath a gray winter sky.

Seasons. Never fails. They sneak up on you, don’t they?

One day I’m looking out my window and the trees are just beginning to bud – tiny little green things stuck on the branches. I feel good… summer is coming. The weather will be beautiful. I can do things outdoors and enjoy reading books under a big red maple tree. The budding trees stimulate my anticipation and I can hardly wait for the warm sunny days of summer.

Next thing I know, those little bright green buds have grown up into full-sized leaves and now they’re droopy, dusty dark-green leaves, just hanging around waiting to die.

Reminds me of people, myself included. I think about it a lot. Unlike people, though, leaves have one last burst of beauty – perhaps even more beautiful – but far less hopeful – than the fresh new buds of spring. To make a bad pun – trees go out in a blaze of glory. Sorry. I couldn’t help that. But really… not many of us get more beautiful in the days and hours before our demise. Unless you believe beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

It won’t be long and I’ll be watching the trees glow magnificently in their annual autumnal death march. I do so enjoy walking in the autumn, crispy leaves crunching and crackling under every step. I enjoy walking in autumn almost as much as the anticipation of summer that I feel when I see those first baby buds of spring.

I actually like autumn almost as much as I love summer, but I really dislike its unstoppable death-march to winter.

Winter is the season of chills and death. Of desperate winds and hungry cold. Of mysteriously beautiful snowy landscapes that grow brown and dirty and ugly too quickly. Winter is the season of slush and damp, bone-biting cold. It is the season of cars that won’t start, driveways that need to be cleared, and the longest months of the year.

Winter is a time when a trip to the grocery store takes a strong, willful act. A fifteen-minute trip to buy a few groceries, ends up taking an hour out of my day, and who knows how many hours out of my life.

So here it is, the end of August and autumn is just a few weeks away – and winter lies in wait. I know it, you know it, anyone who grew up here knows it. Oh they try to tell you they love winter. They even have ski racks on tops of their cars, but they don’t love winter, they love drinking by the fire in the ski lodge, after a few tumbles down the slopes. Don’t tell me they can’t wait to get back inside. They can’t fool me.

There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not about to move to Ecuador, and Florida and Arizona are too crowded. Besides my roots are here – what an excuse. That does that mean? My roots are here? I am a person not a tree. I don’t have roots. I should pick up and move to Ecuador… where it is always summer.

But I won’t. Even if I could I wouldn’t. I’d miss the seasons. I guess winter is necessary, just like darkness is necessary so we can the beauty of the stars. Without rain, would we appreciate the sun as much? It’s just too bad winter has to be twice as long as any other season. But without it, would I appreciate those tiny buds of spring and revel in the anticipation of summer that they bring? I don’t think so.

In what will seem like just a few minutes, the summer will have turned to autumn, and fiery beauty will create a magnificent world, if only for a short time. I will walk through the red and gold and yellow forests, with leaves falling on my head and crunching underfoot. I will breathe the fresh, clean, crisp air of autumn and be thankful that I am able to enjoy these precious moments.

And I’ll try hard not to think of the bitter winds and dead things that winter will bring. Before too long, those tiny green buds of spring will decorate the trees with an odd but beautiful light-green tint. And I will enjoy the anticipation of summer once again.

Seasons. Never fails. They sneak up on you, don’t they?