The Pull of the Season

It is winter. The trees are mostly bare, the days are becoming grey and heavy, and the air is - well, not as cold as it should be. A little agapanthus flowers in my garden, the scent of wattle is heavy in the air. The seasons are strange right now.

Afternoon sun at the change in season, autumn gives way to winter.

For some years now, I have been shifting closer to living in tune with the season. It is not easy, when we live in a society that no longer relies on the seasons. Vegetables are grown all year round under lights and with hydroponic set-ups, street lights make the night into day, the work day is relentless as the economy must still grow (apparently, so we have been told).

But the earth is still the same. Humans are still creatures of the earth, and there is still the rhythm of the season, the beat of something more primal. Winter is a time of dormancy, of going within. Of spending less energy, of keeping warm, of sleeping longer with the longer hours of darkness. Spring signals the time of emergence, of coming to life again after the winter hibernation. Summer is expansive, the energy is high and productivity is too. The gardens bloom and provide much abundance. Autumn is a time for softening, easing off. Slowing the pace, in readiness for the coming cold. And for beauty in ageing. 

And yet our modern world seems so out of touch with the true nature of the seasons. Foods are no longer seasonal. I can walk into my local supermarket and buy tomatoes, if I want to. The shorter day is nowhere reflected in an adjustment to the typical working hours expected of employees, and shops remain open after dark, catering for people still out and about, when in earlier times, they would have been tucked up at home as the sun went down. 

I am stepping further and further towards living in tune with the season. My body has always known what to do. It wants more rest in winter, yet I have fought against it. It wants to keep me warm with a little extra weight for the colder months, yet I have always fought against it. It wants to go for walks outside, rugged up against the cold in warm clothes. I have forced it into much harder exercise, in much lighter clothes, and now pay the price with cold lodged in my bones. My body wants to  slow down, be warm, be nourished, and now I am going to let it.

I want for my son to know the seasons. I want him to grow up to appreciate the beauty of every season, and to experience and truly live, the changes in the season. Not the cricket season or the footy season. No. The true nature of the world around him. Of the leaves on the trees as they change colour and fall. And the vegetables we grow in the garden over summer, then go all year without, until we can grow them once again. I want him to know the joy of a warm home in winter, filled with the smells of hearty, earthy soups cooking on the stove. I want him to know the delight in a ripe, homegrown tomato in summer, and how that cannot be replaced by a tomato grown artificially, out of season. I want him to know that it is ok to slow down, to do less, sleep more, over winter. And he will only know these things because that is what we live.

Do you feel the pull of the seasons?