A Life Measured by Seasons--and Hummingbirds

We woke up early yesterday and took our coffee and paper out onto the deck for another peaceful Sunday morning. The crisp 55 degree weather awakened my senses to an early fall. All still looked like summer, and it still sounded like summer--the birds and crickets chirping, the rustling of creatures, the bloom of herbs and annuals. But the apples in the orchard behind us have become a magical red before I even realized it. Soon groups of deer will stop under the trees, gobbling in the early cold months, then pawing at frozen ground for leftovers closer to the year's end.

The seasons this year have caught me by surprise, and so have the hummingbirds. I missed the brief spring migration--the winter was long, and they migrated north before I could muster the courage put their feeders outside. I would have, though, if I had known their tiny bodies were braving such cold. This year as well, I didn't imagine they were migrating south already, but as we read our paper, we heard the immistakable sound of a prehistoric misquito approaching us. The female hummingbird took a tiny sip of the 3-month old sugar residue, then fled when she noticed us sitting a meter away. That got my ass in gear--yelling "hummingbird!" I dashed into the house to replenish the sugar supply.

It's easy to live a seasonal life here in Wisconsin, where we undeniably have four very distinct seasons. But it wasn't until we moved out of the city that I truly felt the seasons as more than just changes in weather. There's a new, comforting predictability in the apples turning red, in the barn owl's mid-summer hoot, in the creek roaring with spring's melted snow. These are events that cannot be written in advance on one's wall calendar--they just happen with the seasons.

I've come to believe that a life measured in years is too abstract--ironic, since we've numbered our days with set minutes and hours. What can we say of 2008? Of 2009? "It was a good year?" "That was the year we...?" What do those statements mean, after all?

I imagine, too, that having a young child makes one live seasonally all the more. After all, a 1-year old child has no concept of years. A newborn baby is almost unrecognizably a different being at 4, 6, 12 months old. It's stunning to think that the toddling, waving, laughing child was unable to even roll over or sit up earlier that year.

When I measure by seasons, life seems more manageable. The seasons offer their own comforts and promises, and I've come to appreciate them all. Winter is no longer just an undesirable part of the year to "get through." Winter now offers me the quiet of a fresh-snow morning, the spell of blue hours at dusk, time to rest with my family on long dark nights, the joy of making slow food such as chili, spiced cider, winter squash, and that good local favorite--WI beer-cheese soup.

Living seasonally helps me accept the natural ebb and flow of relationships, feelings, and lifestages as well. We need not be constant year-round. There are seasons of the mind, of marriage, of obligation, of thought, of friendship. There are seasons for questioning, for exploration, for accepting. There are seasons of family life--and being a wildly impatient person by nature, this helps me accept situations that are temporary but feel like they are permanent.

Eating seasonally has long been a part of my adult life--probably starting with the time I lived in Nepal, during which I observed an environment where people were much more attuned to the land. In the US, where most everything is now available year-round, there is opportunity every day to feast. Foods and meals that were once had in celebration no longer mark the seasons for many people. While I am grateful that I have year-round access to healthy vegetarian food, we buy from the farmer's markets when we can (I wish we had year-round farmer's markets in WI, but as far as I know, the only such one is in Madison), which covers most of spring well into late fall. I find that eating seasonal foods makes me more grateful for the seasonal cycle, and lends a special quality to the dishes themselves.

Living seasonally leads to a rather interesting phenomenon and that is...year-round gratitude for what God has created--the special gifts and possibilities the divine gives to humankind in all situations.

As it draws to an end, summer 2009 will go down as a "purple flower and bumble bee summer:" a summer of no surgeries or hospitalizations. A summer of long walks. A summer of friends and birthdays. A summer of reprieve.