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A reflection on the seasons

I have a weird relationship with the calendar. Up until this year, I never knew which months corresponded to which season or what their exact order is. I’m half joking, it’s a little like the alphabet for me, if I must figure it out, I can sing and discover that J comes way earlier in the alphabet than I thought, and if needed, I could think through the year and determine where September falls, but otherwise it stays a little vague. I’m 19, I figure I should have this nailed by 20.

This year I was living on my own for much of the year with neither a family in my immediate vicinity nor a school schedule to live by, my gaps in knowledge have since filled in. One afternoon in May, I stepped outside of my work during lunch to a beautiful, sunny day. I lay in the bed of my truck for several minutes soaking up the life force radiating into my skin, I had never felt the sun like that before, as the energy that seeds my will to live and to thrive. I started to reflect on the way our seasons are described in books. “On a warm summers night”, “On a rainy winter day”. I never thought much about these descriptions before, I thought they were irrelevant.

I realized this spring that summer is the season of life, the season of growth. I looked forward to summer like I never had before, I wanted to be free to live and grow under the sun in the vibrant summer air, I wanted this so badly that I never noticed when it came. When the fall weather arrived in early October, I realized that summer was over, though I never knew it had begun. This is barely an exaggeration at all, I really thought summer was just beginning until it was over; I told you I have a weird relationship with the calendar…

When I made the observation that fall was beginning, it upset me. I had discovered the power of summer just months before, and now I would face the cold, wet, dark and dreary pacific northwest winter before I got to feel the rays of life on my skin again. This was a mistake.

I started to find joy, today, in the cold, rainy, colorful, fall weather. I realized that I also yearn for the darkness in the winter to drive me, spring like fall, and summer again. This quartette of weather patterns doesn’t seem so random after all, I don’t live in an annoying, rainy corner of the world, I live in a harmonious balance of life. Give and take, earn and seek, make and grow. This piece of writing is my observation of what each season means to me.

Summer gives life, and winter will take it all back and more if you don’t fight. I think about winter now, the colder, the wetter, the darker, the more miserable the better. It lights a fire within me to do anything I set out to do, to succeed without exception, to brave any storm. If you let the world carry you along, you will feel the high of summer, and every year the winter will take you lower, never to fly as high again, the cycle will suck your life from you year by year. But look that devil in the eyes and walk on; stand your ground in the dark, and come the light again you will reach new heights.

If summer and winter are give and take, then fall and spring are observe and inspire. I was struck by several trees today full of vibrant orange, yellow, and red leaves. I have two distinct but overlapping varieties of “color blindness”, and it is rare that colors leap out to me, these, however, did. That’s all, they inspired me, and I will carry that with me through this next year.

I don’t know exactly how to map it, but it is clear to me that male and female belong in this space. I have mentioned several pairs of ideas here, and they all have an inherent relation to the masculine and the feminine. I won’t attempt to match them all up here because I only seek to observe patterns that strike me. What I have written so far speaks to me as meaningful, I don’t know how to map concrete links onto all of it, and so I won’t.

I should give credit to an artist I never understood before now. Her name is Nikki McClure, and I knew her son through elementary and middle school. She makes lots of art which I won’t attempt to describe – you should look it up, I wouldn’t do it justice – much of it in the form of calendars. I always saw how skilled she was as an artist, but I never understood the insight she held until now, now I get it. Anyways, if you go take a look at her work I am sure you will see parallels to this piece, I grew up around her art and I am certain it inspires the words I write.