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Poor Will's Almanack: May 9 - 15, 2023

Cedar Bog Nature Preserve in Urbana
https://www.facebook.com/cedarbog

This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack for the third week of Late Spring, the fourth week of the Tulip Moon, the third week of the Sun in Taurus.

Among the many rewards of watching what happens in nature is a growing perception of the time and space of my own narrow habitat.

And what has fascinated me most recently is that the elements or signs of time are also the building blocks of space.

I start to see how the landscape and the climate of the place in which I live are the sum of their parts, and that keeping track of them brings them into existence for me.

I also see that local observation does not exclude the wider world. Rather, it serves as a gauge for what lies beyond it, introducing and enhancing it, putting it in an immediate context, giving it relevance. This world that I watch here leads outward as well as inward.

I realize, too, that there is great enjoyment just in seeing where I am and in reliving the experiences, realizing that going back over them makes me happy.

Over the years, my habitat has become smaller, and my memories compensate, connect me to an endless number of spaces and times that accumulate to form another dimension.

This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the fourth week of Late Spring. In the meantime, if you look closely, you may see that the pieces of time, like flowers or green grass, turn into the place you live in.

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Bill Felker has been writing nature columns and almanacs for regional and national publications since 1984. His Poor Will’s Almanack has appeared as an annual publication since 2003. His organization of weather patterns and phenology (what happens when in nature) offers a unique structure for understanding the repeating rhythms of the year.