One of the reasons I enjoy the Capital Weather Gang (CWG) is that in addition to solid regional weather coverage, they provide insight into national and worldwide weather events and climate. This story, about current California wildfires, showed up on my Twitter feed this week. Given the blur that was the second half of last year, it would have been easy to think, “Gee, well, it’s September, and there are fires. Next.” But, no, time has in fact passed, and it’s January… and there are fires. Not just in California, either.
First days of seasons so often seem to miss their mark, promising either something that has already arrived or that may not appear for weeks. They masquerade as transitions when in reality, the transitions exist on a continuum, and that official “first day” merely marks the calendar’s progress. Yes, there is the lengthening or shortening that is most dramatic on an equinox, but things don’t necessarily feel different.
Why, then, do we go to so much trouble to note the hour and minute that one season slips into the next? Perhaps it is simply because we need to measure the days in some way. For quite a few years, I measured them with my students by writing haiku. But this isn’t about the haiku; it’s about the images and music this first day of fall calls to mind for me.
Back in the early spring, when the pandemic was still in its U.S. infancy, I watched the unraveling of so many systems with a sense of dread. All I could think of were parallels between what I was seeing and some of my worser-case scenarios for the social upheaval that may result from climate change. And so I wrote this:
Long have I envisioned a day in the future, maybe 20 years from now, maybe only 10, when my daughter will come to me with a question I cannot easily answer. The afternoon will be sunny, warm, with a slight breeze, and in so many other times and places, a perfect day. Except it will be December, January. Something will be not quite right, or many things will be terribly wrong. I will know the question before she asks it; I have been imagining it for years. Why wasn’t more done, and sooner, to deal with climate change?
Fall-like weather you can’t feel from a photo, a bird I can’t name, and a snake in front of it (not visible here).
We are not really saying good-bye to summer, of course. In recent years, I have seen temperatures in the 70s well into December. Still, the light has been shifting for weeks now, and this past weekend we got our first breath of fresh air with a Saturday that was cool(er) and breezy. I think nearly any place could feel like heaven in those conditions.
As it was, we spent part of the morning walking around a nearby lake, which was good enough. Blue skies, water rippled by light wind, enough people out to convey a sense of connection, not so many that we wanted to be somewhere else instead. For some reason, though, this particular lake makes us think and talk about being in other places: Maine, North Carolina, Montana, Europe. What if…? What if…?
