In the spring I do, in the autumn I think.
We are an urban people now who reckon time passing by the changing of decorations in stores and the types of sales offered by retailers.
As a woman who grew up playing, observing, and walking amid overgrown fence-lines, that I like to think of as hedgerows, I try to keep seasons alive in the old way of knowing I learned through experience that the climate, weather, and seasons guide our lives and activity.
I am a bridge. I embody and represent a connection between generations and lifestyles. My parents were 41 and 42 when I was born in 1957. I ride along the top of the demographic wave, the bell curve, that is the Baby Boom. My mother would celebrate her 100th birthday next month if she lived.
I do not remember there being no electricity or plumbing in the house, but my brothers did. They remembered using horses to pull farm equipment. Modernizations came after WWII and before I was born. Our central heating was a coal-burning furnace in the basement. These facts shock my coastal and urban friends. But in the midwest and intermountain west the Rural Electrification Program was a big deal and farming communities saw their cities and major highways have power lines run along them in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Electric pumps allowed water into houses in the same way we know it today. A few houses, ours included, had gravity fed baths and sinks, supplied from attic-based tanks.
The contemporary urban migration and expansion into the agricultural hinterlands began in the 196os bringing factory and office workers into previously agriculture-based communities. My favorite book as a child was Virginia Lee Burton’s The Little House that presented this change in the way wee ones could understand.
The the time and length of the evening progression of waining light was noticeable and the night skies were dark. Living on a farm, we spent lots of time out of doors for work and relaxation. Some of my favorite memories of being a little child are from being outside in the backyard with my dad after dark. He would point out which lights were what: a pole-light from a farm a mile down the road, a satellite, a star or planet. Echo was the first satellite he pointed out to me. I remember him making sure I knew how to find the North Star. He also wanted me to memorize Longfellow’s poems about American History; The Song of Hiawatha, and The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere were favorites of his.
I grew up in the midst of a vanishing lifestyle. The small, mixed crop, farm of the late 19th and early 20th Century had already given way to the small corporate family farm of the mid-late 20th Century when I was small. A man, one tractor, and land he owned and farmed was extremely old-fashioned when compared with the multiple, rented farms, big equipment, and incorporated businesses that were what most of my friends from farming families experienced as kids. I think of this during autumn when so many living systems become dormant in the temperate and Northern latitudes. Some will come to life again in the spring, and some will not.
The fall is harvest season. There is deep-seated satisfaction about seeing the rewards of spring and summer’s labors gathered, preserved, and stored for the coming winter. Though I now live where trees stay green the year around, I feel the pull of learned ways to harvest and prepare for long winter months. But there is no longer a need to do this, so I sit on the patio, warm breezes and hummingbirds keep me company and I ponder other times and the old ways that live on only in my memory. Sometimes I feel like the last passenger pigeon must have felt one hundred years ago.
An Eight Sided Name For Month Ten
Names
I've always wondered why October, which is obviously supposed to be the eighth (octo means eight) month of the year, is now the tenth month of the year? I know two months were added to the calendar at some point, but most people who have passing acquaintance with such things think it has something to do with Julian to Gregorian calendar conversions. Nope. Blame Numa. He changed the calendar of Romulus where Winter had no months, and the year started with the Vernal or Spring Equinox. The following explanation is from Wikipedia:
Numa Pompilius, the second of the seven traditional kings of Rome, reformed the calendar of Romulus by prefixing January and February around 713 BC to the original ten months; thus the names of Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November and December (implying fifth through tenth) no longer agreed with their position in his calendar.
Although Numa wanted to have a year of 354 days, Romans considered odd numbers to be lucky,[4] so Numa added 51 days to the 304 days in the calendar of Romulus and took one day from each of the six 30-day months giving a total of 57 days to share between January and February. January was given 29 days leaving February with the unlucky number of 28 days, suitable for the month of purification. Of the eleven months with an odd number of days, four had 31 days each and seven had 29 days each.
Actions
Provisioning used to be the focus for everyone in the Northern Hemisphere at this time of year that falls between the Harvest and Hunter's Moons. Even when I was a child on a farm in Indiana we were focused on canning or preserving the last bit of the garden, culling the old hens and replacing them in the chicken coops with pullets who had been free-ranging up until that time. Dad and my brothers were busy harvesting out in the fields. Wardrobe was assessed with fit and wear-and-tear determining what needed to be replaced when the crops were sold. Preparations for hunting season were made. Winterizing the house with storm windows and closing up the window wells into the cellar except for the shoot for filling the “coal bin” with wood or coal, and of course checking out the furnace to make sure it was functioning properly. October was a month of intense work. Halloween was not a big deal back then. We had other stuff to do. How times have changed for most of the population. At the time I had no idea that I was one of the last people to live on what was essentially the last of the small family farms that were more akin to the 19th Century than 20th.
Thoughts
October makes me think, and I suspect I'm not the only one who feels this way. The long stretched rays of late afternoon sunlight really does have a different feel about it. The golden glow is beautiful but somehow melancholy. Dormancy and the dying back of plants is a reminder of the passing of time and the cycle of life. Seasonal Affective Disorder can steer a person toward depression biologically and the approaching Holidays for some can be a reminder of people who are no longer in their lives. I know that I will have thoughts aligning themselves in new ways and that there will be massive amounts of inspiration for writing. I can settle into absolute funks this time of year, but with a new puppy in the house to keep me busy,I don't think I will have time for any moping, but I will have time for snippets of writing between puppy tasks, so it should lend itself to blogging and other well bounded writing tasks.