On a mid-October morning I stepped outside. It was cold, and there was death all around me.
Okay, I’m being overly dramatic. It was plants that were in various stages of expiration. The year’s first hard freeze was the Grim Reaper for all things green and rooted.
In recent years, as Pam has had more time, she’s planted a larger number of flowering things each year. Some are in pots, some in the ground. For a few months, it makes for a colorful and cheery environ with our house in the center. It’s a lot of work, especially in a dry year, dragging hoses and carrying watering cans about. It’s not my favorite thing to do. But I love my wife, so don’t grumble much.
This fall, we had a series of light frosts that nipped Pam’s more sensitive fauna the first half of October. The tomato plants in our humble and not-terribly-productive garden gave up the ghost early, but most plants survived. Pam’s favorites got a sheet thrown over them to guard from 31 degrees. A number of flowers about the yard held their color bravely and gamely.
Till this morning. Nature declared the growing season over. Sheets are not adequate to protect from 17 degrees. Everywhere, leaves were curled and brittle looking. Flowers that had aimed at the sun the day before were drooped. Summer would now relinquish any grip she held. Colors were fading, on their way to brown. Brown will be the dominant color around here till white falls to coat the Earth.
Looking around, this was all a perfect metaphor for death. It is that way every year when summer passes away. As I walked, seeing my breath, I thought this year I was not especially needing such a metaphor. I’d been to several wakes lately of people I liked very much and the funeral of a very good friend. Death has been real enough, no need for the poetry of nature to reinforce it.
For Pam’s annuals and a certain number of bugs and crawly things, it is not a metaphor for death; it is death. If they’ve succeeded in the warm months, there are seeds and eggs to carry the species to another growing season. For Pam’s perennials, there is life in the roots. Some critters burrow into the ground, to emerge in the spring. Others are just tough enough to get through it, knowing how to shelter from the worst of blizzards. Nature is amazing in that way.
I enjoy the seasons, but this is my least favorite time on the calendar. The days shorten dramatically from the beginning of harvest chores in September to its conclusion in November. The day shrivels. Throw in a time change, and it feels like we’re living in the Arctic Circle. The sun goes down about middle of the afternoon. At least, it seems that way.
After my 66 times round the sun, I know if I hang in there a month or so, it will change. Right there, on the winter solstice, the light will slowly begin its return. It won’t feel like it at first. But sometime late in January I will be outside, and the sun will be stronger and feel good on my face.
And somewhere out there, in a time that seems immeasurably distant right now, green will reappear. At first, it will only be a tint, then a hue, and finally real green. Life will return. Returning to metaphor, that will be a season of birth, a counterweight to this season of death we find ourselves in.
The farmer in me knows these rhythms. The plants I fussed and worried over for half a year have died. I have harvested their seeds and tilled their stalks and stems into the soil. I will plant seeds into that soil in six months and we’ll do it all over again. If I step back from the day-to-day stresses of markets, weather, breakdowns, etc., I can look at this thing I get to do as a great gift. My work is totally defined by the seasons.
Seeing the seasons as metaphor for life is about the least creative thing I’ve ever written. The notion has been around a while. About 2,500 years ago, someone wrote, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”
That’s in the Old Testament. Seasons-as-metaphor are all over the New Testament and the Christian story. Light comes to lift us out of the dark, a star over Bethlehem to guide us. Christmas was placed with solstice long ago. It was perfect then and remains so. Then there is the crucifixion and resurrection. Death and life. Winter turn to spring. The empty tomb is found on a spring morning, another perfect alignment of spirit and season.
I can know there will be spring, but I still feel melancholy in these short days of little sun. Earlier in the fall, at the end of a workday, I sat on my truck tail gate with a beer, a favorite thing to do. I was looking out over the yard at the barn swallows darting and flitting. I knew they would be leaving soon for their winter home. It occurred to me that some of them won’t be back next year. I felt momentarily sad.
Some day I won’t be here for the spring greening. In that way, I am more like one of Pam’s annuals than her perennials. Back to metaphor, we sprout from this world and grow up toward the sun. We flower, doing the work and touching whatever lives we will. But winter will come, and we will fade, eventually dying into the Earth from which we sprang.
Okay, I’ve taken this metaphor about as far as I can or should. I’m going to turn on all the lights and eat a bowl of ice cream. If I’m going to make it to spring, I will need sustenance.