TIME OF THE SEASON

BY MONET YELSNICK

This last year required the world to sit still for a moment. It needed us to take a collective deep breath and pause. During this pause, with the usual pleasant distractions of friends, holidays, and family time out of the picture, for the most part, there was so much more time to notice the immediate world around us. I, for one, noticed the flower buds coming in spring when I usually only notice the flowers. I felt the air change, noticed a difference in the pigeons on my block. These are things that would typically never even cross my mind, but this carried over into the trail as well! Usually an escape from my busy city life, hiking was my new go-to, replacing friend and family time, replacing overtime, replacing going out dancing. I was spending so much time in the same patch of green I started to see the minor changes in the woods too. With Fall either here or approaching (depending on where you live), I invite you to notice. To soak in the rhythm around you and to let it help you understand the rhythms in your own life.

The leaves are falling, and the trees are going bare, but baby ferns and nettles are ripe for foraging, and the falling of the leaves feeds the mushrooms that drive an entire economy in my region. Death brings life, and our lives are intimately connected to the cycle of death and rebirth of the landscape around us. This new abundance of hiking has made me understand the process of changes in ways I had never seen before. Hiking is an altogether different experience in the summer than in the fall; it’s different every season. The animals you see and hear, the vegetation around you, the feel of the soil underfoot, the swell of the creeks, it’s constantly changing! This used to seem so vast and unpredictable to me, so mysterious. Still, as it has become a larger part of my life, I have learned this living ecosystem around me and become familiar with the natural cycles happening year-round. The beauty is that this has helped me recognize similar cycles within myself.

Spring gets a lot of the glory when it comes to embracing change- it's a beautiful change that we can see in bright colors, cute baby animals, sunny skies, warmer weather. It's such a pleasant change that we can't help but celebrate, but it can often cause us to look down on the vital changes in fall and winter. We need temperatures to drop, leaves to decay on the ground to provide nutrients, and more access to sunlight for the small plants below their rich canopies. We need the collective deep breath of the environment around us as it gathers energy and resources to burst forth with the glory of spring and summer. We need this in ourselves as well.

This is a direct parallel in our own lives. Sometimes the gritty work, the messiness of moving, changing jobs, ending or changing relationships, digging deep, and facing the ways we hold ourselves back or are too hard on ourselves– our fall and winter seasons, if you will–are vital for us to be our own moments of spring and summer. They are natural, they are cyclical, and they can be nutrient-rich and invaluable in our lives if we let them. The nature of being human is that you can't help but learn. Every experience is stored somewhere inside of you and influences you throughout your life. If we take a moment to actively participate in the downturns and regain control of the narrative, we can use these moments to learn and propel us forward rather than be subsumed by them. We can make award-winning lemonade out of even the sourest lemons. We can't fight change, it's just the nature of our world, but it's possible to not feel like a rag doll shaken in the jaws of change. If we can step outside ourselves for a moment and remember our leaves are just falling to shine a light on plants hoping to grow, we can pull through changes feeling more in control and maybe even a little excited to see what blooms.

“Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence. ” — Yoko Ono