Season Change

When you grow up in Southern California, you don't really experience season changes. You experience slight variations of the daily forecast: sun, with more sun on the horizon. The temperature rises or falls a bit, and if you're lucky, you get to dig out a sweater from time to time. Here on the central California coast, we get a little more variation on that theme (fog vs. sun) but we lack the physical markers like falling leaves and snow to herald a season change.

Yesterday, I took a hike in the back country. It had been a couple of weeks since I'd hiked this particular route and I was amazed to see how much change had occurred. Yes, I could really tell it was autumn. First, there was something about the light. It was sharper and more intense. The shadows were different. It was sunny, true, but the heat had a little bit of an edge to it, holding the promise of a change in the air. None of the obvious signs of fall were present, but the shift was happening all the same and it was exhilarating to be part of it.

I think the reason it struck me so powerfully was that I'd been inside for the last few weeks, keeping off a broken toe. It came home to me all at once, how insulated I'd been from the natural cycles of the world. I don't need to think about shorter daylight hours because I have electricity to provide the illumination I need at any hour. I have heat to warm me and air conditioning to cool me. Hot water is beckoned with the turn of a tap. I love my modern conveniences, but today I am reflecting that they come at a cost: we lose touch with the natural cycles of our world!

If I was living in synch with the seasons, how would life be different? I like to think that I would be more accepting of my own seasons. Rather than trying to be "up" and "on" I'd know when to rest and even hibernate. I would accept aging with more grace and not seek to disguise it or slow it down. Rather than forcing my desires on the world, I'd be more patient, letting things ripen in their own time. I'd probably also be better at letting go of things, recognizing that everything must die and cycle into a new form. Ebb and flow. Wax and wane. Winter. Summer, Autumn. Spring. What would it be like to embrace the cycles in ourselves?

Once, for an idyllic year, I lived in a place where my home was surrounded by meadow and the ocean greeted me from every window. Deer, fox, rabbit, vole, hawk, turkey vulture . . . they were my neighbors. That year, I began to live in harmony with the seasons, with my own seasons. I attribute this to my teachers: the meadow, the sea, and the animals. Remembering this, it seems to me that even in my urban world, I can still choose to spend more time outside, and in doing so perhaps ease myself back into this other way of being in the world, a way that changes with the seasons vs. isolating and insulating. I am reminded that the best teachers are not found in the pages of a book or in a TED talk. These teachers are always available, their teaching freely given, as soon as we step out our doors and choose to notice. It's a sort of teaching we absorb through our pores. We breathe it in.

Wherever you are, please log off, and take yourself to a park, a beach, or even your own backyard. Let's remember our seasons and come home to ourselves.