Transitions

The changing seasons offer a reminder to treasure every gift while it lasts.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY PENNY HEWITT

n Election Day I tow our tractor a dozen miles to the north, to help move material for a foundation job my friend Michael is working on. I drive slowly, as I always do when I’m towing, and as I mostly do even when I’m not towing. On a little-traveled gravel road I pass a herd of black Angus walking single file along a well-worn path across a stubbled field, the sun already high and hot on their dark flanks. It is warmer than it should be for November, or at least it seems so to me; earlier in the morning, I’d done chores in a T-shirt, the crop of goose bumps on my arms receding as sunlight filtered through the copse of spruce that defines the eastern boundary of our land.

I drive with the window down, my left arm hanging lazily out. From time to time, I rest my hand on the side-view mirror, then let it fall again to bounce my fingers against the door in time to the music on the radio. It’s George Thorogood and the Destroyers singing “I Drink Alone,” one of those songs that live forever in the recesses of my memory, and I find myself mindlessly mouthing the lyrics as I watch the Angus amble toward fence-line shade and my hand thumps to the beat.

The fine weather won’t last, of course, and this is precisely what makes it so delicious. Were I a more grateful person, I’d probably be able to see that every day is a gift. Yet while I certainly aspire to such a view, I can’t with any honesty lay claim to it. My life is full of goodness and beauty, to be sure, but like most people I endure days that seem to take more than they give, though I strive always for awareness of my privilege: I am male, white, and English-speaking in a country that favors such things, and beyond that I am hearty and hale, and I can reasonably expect to still live for as many years as I have so far lived. My family is also healthy, my children belligerent only on occasion. All of which is to say: My bad days are better than many people’s good ones.

But a T-shirt morning in November? A truck window open to that particular scent of autumnal heat, defined by the earthen notes of desiccated maple leaves and picked-over pastures, the grass down to nub ends, losing color by the day? It’s so different from the lush odor of spring, when everything is verdant and wet and bursting with emerging life. That odor lives in the chest. This one is more nasal; it resides in the head, not the body, and I breathe it deeply as I drive. It’s barely past 8 in the morning, and already I can see this day for the gift that it is. It’s not one to erase from the calendar, or even to add to the tally without remark. It’s too fine and too rare for that, and I know it will lodge in my memory to be recalled at will, almost like the lyrics to an old rock ’n’ roll song I didn’t even know I knew.

Late that afternoon, after Michael and I have finished our work together and I’ve loaded the tractor and headed for home, I pass the herd of Angus again. They’re walking the same path they’d walked that morning, but this time in the opposite direction. I feel a sudden, almost irrational sense of gratitude at the alignment of our schedules, all of us bound for the familiar comfort of nighttime shelter. It’s still warm, verging on hot, and I’m dirty from the day’s work, which involved a fair bit of skin-to-soil contact. When I glance at my arm resting on the truck’s windowsill, I see that the crease of my elbow is filled with a puttylike mixture of sweat and dirt, and suddenly I can think of nothing but the pond and how good it will feel to immerse myself in it. The pond is spring-fed and cold even in the middle of summer; now, with many hard frosts behind us, the water will be almost painful to the touch, and for a moment I allow myself to believe I’ll walk right past it. But as soon as I park the truck, even before I unload the tractor or climb the small rise to the house to greet my family, I shuck off my clothes and jump in.

As snow sifts down in late autumn, Ben Hewitt tends to his cows Apple, right, a Jersey-Devon cross, and Bilbo and Frodo, who are part British White and part Milking Shorthorn.

As expected, the warm weather does not last. Only a couple of weeks after my final swim of the year, a snow squall deposits a fast handful of inches. A few days after that, the temperature drops to 12 below, and we are thrust into winter proper. Outside, the cows take refuge under the tin roof of the run-in shed, and the hens hide away in their winter coop. Egg production drops from a solid dozen per day to barely half that—just enough to maintain our breakfast habit.

Inside, we tend the wood stove, slowly diminishing the stacks the boys spent so many hours assembling only a few months before. Don’t worry, fellas, I say. There’ll be plenty more wood to stack come spring. For some reason, the humor is lost on them.

Penny begins her annual tradition of folding strips of birch bark into graceful star ornaments. She makes some to sell and many more to give away; by now, most relatives and many friends have received a star, but still every year it seems there are more to give, the circle of recipients expanding as people come into our lives or the mood strikes. She does this mostly in the evenings, while the boys and I read or play card games, betting away nickels and dimes as if they grew on trees. We retire to bed early, leaving the fire to burn down to ashes; in the morning, I’ll lay a new fire and enjoy a quiet hour to myself, sitting by the wood stove as I am right now, drinking coffee with the cats milling about, rubbing against my shin as they pass.

It is the transitions I love the most. The transitions of the seasons—fall to winter, to spring, then summer and fall again. Everything seems heightened during these ephemeral periods: The smells are sharper and fuller, the colors deeper. There’s an emotional quality to transition, too, composed in part of the urgency in preparing for the coming season but also, I think, of the reminder that all is impermanent. Nothing lasts forever. Not a halcyon November day, not a woodpile, not a snowstorm. Not a life.

And I love the transitions at the shoulders of each day, like the one happening around me right now, as early light comes into the sky. Soon I’ll rise from my chair, don rubber boots and wool jacket, and step out into a cleansing blanket of new-fallen snow. The boughs of the conifers hang heavy, and I regard them as I walk toward the barn, wondering if the trees hold awareness of this strange new weight. Already I know that later in the afternoon Penny and I will step into cross-country skis. We’ll pass directly through town on our way to a hilltop sugarbush just to the north of our land. The bush is untapped, and the owner has cut narrow, winding trails through the stately maples. We’ll ski until the light has dimmed, then turn back, past the old town church, over the small bridge, and up the short hill to home.