There Is a Season For All Things

With spring finally here, after a particularly brutal winter in a good part of the United States, we decided to reflect a bit about the seasons. So we asked our authors this question:

What is your favorite season and why?

Several of them waxed quite poetic with their answers.

Shannon:

The seasons pull my soul along as surely as the moon affects the tides. Right now we’re heading into spring. Spring births restlessness. The kind that makes me want to plant herbs and fairy gardens, clear out clutter and polish everything in my life until it shines like the moon.

We’re just leaving winter behind and I say good riddance. Winter buries me in darkness. Just like a tulip bulb waiting in the suffocating, cold earth, I wait in stillness for the season to leave. My soul mutters, “This too shall pass” as the days grow darker and colder.

Before that came fall. Fall also brings restlessness for me, but a different kind. Fall brings a deep ache for bare Gypsy feet, a need to be blown into unknown places like the brittle leaves when the high winds howl. Fall brings longing for travel, exploration, to be anywhere but where I am.

And then there is summer. My love. The season where I finally feel like myself.

Summer blows my heart wide open with bone- warming sunshine and precious ocean time. I am no longer restless or curled inward. I am alive. I feel my heart beating, overflowing with gratitude.

Summer brings salty hair and lips; sweet, lazy laughter-filled days with the kids. It brings peace on healing rays of sun. In the summer, I feel connected to Mother Earth and grounded in the moment as I dig my toes into warm sand. Summer is my long, contented sigh and when it comes, I am finally home.

Kathy

There is something about autumn that has always appealed to me: the fresh, crisp air after the humidity of summer; the blaze of golds, reds, and burnt oranges that sweeps across the landscape; kids starting the new school year (most of them ready to go back – the parents sure are); roadside stands and farmer’s markets spilling over with harvest bounty.

It’s a time when I feel more energetic and want to do more things, whether it’s visiting a pumpkin patch, going leaf-peeping, making a hearty stew, or cleaning up the yard. I find myself exploring new recipes to use up the surplus in my garden, or learning ways to preserve some of it for winter.

It’s a time to pull out the fall decorations, to spruce things up with pumpkins, gourds, and tea lights, and to pull out the backyard fire bowl and sit around it, swapping tales of our day while sipping cocktails.

Our family looks forward to the fall holidays of Halloween and Thanksgiving, too. My kids have been able to enjoy Halloween in a way that I never could in my childhood, because my allergy-induced asthma often put me in the hospital in late October, especially during my trick-or-treat years. I carved my first pumpkin at 22. But I think I’ve now carved enough pumpkins to have made up for lost time! I consider myself very blessed to enjoy many Halloweens with my own children, and every year it feels like I’m just as much of a kid about it as they are. I don’t think I’ll ever “quite” grow up in that regard.

Kass

The seasons really affect my mood. They always have. When we lived in Maryland, my favorite season was summer, hands down.

I hated winter with its short, gray days and icy roads. I would start to come to life in the spring, but that is Maryland’s rainy season. So while the temperatures were warmer and the threat of ice and snow faded away, it was still gray and damp all too many days.

Summer was what I lived for. Yes, it was hot, but the long, long days of sunshine were worth a little sweat. I love being outdoors and I love projects, and there was always something to be done on our little horse farm–a fence needing mending, an outbuilding to be painted. I was in my glory!

Now I live in northern Florida, and while I still like summer a lot, spring has become my favorite season. Unlike in Maryland, spring tends to be fairly dry down here. For days on end, the sun shines, the temperatures hover in the high 70’s to low 80’s and the humidity is relatively low. The mild but rainy winters produce lush greenery and gorgeous spring flowers.

Winter still depresses me a little, but I know it will be short-lived and I will come to life again in March, when our long, glorious spring begins.

Vinnie

I wonder if our favorite season might correspond to the arc of our lives. When I was growing up in South Dakota, I loved springtime, especially May, that sliver between freezing cold and hellish hot. As a young adult, I became a beach bunny in California and loved summertime beach volleyball. The long stretch of day meant more playing time.

Now, in the autumn of my years, my favorite season is fall.

When Emily Dickinson wrote, “There’s a certain slant of light,” I feel she must have meant the angled light of autumn. Here in Santa Cruz, that soft light ushers in our loveliest weather.

With the shortening days, self-reflection takes hold in me, a quiet repose that suits my current stage.

How about you? What is your favorite season, and why?

 

Posted by Kassandra Lamb on behalf of the whole gang. We blog here at misterio press once (sometimes twice) a week, usually on Tuesdays. Sometimes we talk about serious topics, and sometimes we just have some fun.

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