Late Summer departs almost within the same winds on which Early Fall arrives. The physical differences of the two seasons are sometimes easy to miss until the weather, the landscape's color and vegetation are suddenly transformed.
Vague feelings and subtle changes of attitude can form a kind of emotional time that offers more access to the seasonal shift. Everyone has their own cues or markers for emotional time. It is not really the number of events and objects that bring a personal sense of Early Fall, but rather the varied emotional effects of the many accompanying associations.
The signs and the reactions to them are what make the transition so difficult to define. In some ways, every season is the sum of its parts. The arbitrary nature of seasons-in-our-minds, however, is a doorway to discovering the human and spiritual seasons born of the exterior progress of the year.
In this age of concern about climate change, it will be the cues of emotional time that are most likely to bring about the radical changes necessary for survival.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will's Almanack. I'll be back again next week with more notes on nature and the seasons. In the meaning, think about your emotional seasons and how they might inform you about what is happening in the external world.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with more notes on the seasons. In the meantime,
