I grew up in a land of perpetual summer,
not close enough to the equator for monsoons,
not far enough away for there ever to be
the slightest chance of snow
except on the highest mountains...
no matter how hard we wished.
Of course, I had seen on screens
the brilliant colors of the leaves,
the brilliant colors of the leaves,
the slow, sweet, sad dying of the world into winter,
but what a revelation was autumn
in Europe, the Northeast, the Midwest,
but best in the Pacific Northwest.
The sensory experience of “crisp” air,
the textural knowledge that
rain can be as cold as ice
rain can be as cold as ice
and then actually be ice!
I remember rushing in one morning and saying
“Everything is covered in ice!”
and being told gently,
like a child a bit behind in vocabulary,
“We call that frost.”
The coldness of winter was not a surprise,
after so many art projects with cotton balls,white chalk on black paper,
was indeed a wonder.
So quiet the world and clean,
covered in that blanket of stillness,
so brilliant and blinding when the sun shines.
Wet, dry, drifting down,
furiously swirling, packed and thrown,
dirty and sullen on the side of the road, melting,
then dangerously pretending to be soft
when already frozen hard again.
The joy of being inside, warm socks,
fireplaces and snuggling.
Never knowing what will come next out of the sky,
soft, hard, round, long and sleek....
water takes on so many forms.
Even summer is a new thing.
Though familiar at first,
it turns on us and becomes
a raging beast, a dragon with fiery breath,
and then we hide in the shadows,
look for cool water in the shade,
and we remember the blessings
of trade winds and sweet rain,
but they will not come....
no matter how hard we wish.
But the best is spring.
Brave crocuses poking above the snow, peeping out of the mud,
and suddenly daffodils, as bright as the sun, and everywhere!
Then that color that you have seen on crayon wrappers,
touted on paint boxes, described in Easter stories
is draped on barren trees,
and you know in your heart that
the words “spring green”
can never truly encompass its glory.
I have become addicted to this ever-changing way of life
and cannot go back even though sometimes,
especially in the gray of the very dead of winter,
I dream of the warm and fragrant islands of my youth
and know that they will always be in my heart,
no matter what the weather is like outside.
*I took these photos in these places:
Autumn is at Hoyt Arboretum in Portland, Oregon.
Winter is at Camp Angelos in Corbett, Oregon
Summer is at Salt Water State Park in Des Moines, Washington
Spring is at Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge in DuPont, Washington
