I don’t know how you my loyal readers feel about our seasons, but I kind of enjoy the changes that each season brings to me. Winter’s snow and bare trees make way for blossoms and greenery of spring. Heat of summer steadily makes way to autumn splendor of golden rod and rust. Then first blasts of winter in the form of storms that blow cold gusts into my face and watching virgin snow fall gently to the ground covering everything in white.
Of course, the symbolism of the changes doesn’t go unnoticed on me either. Children and adolescents bound and play in their springtime youth, summertime brings young adults into marriage and future growth. Autumn shows maturity as we slowly and surely gracefully age and mellow, followed finally by the finiteness of winter and our own mortality that awaits all of us. To that end, springtime renews itself with fresh life.
As I have told many of you and perhaps fittingly so, if we didn’t at least appreciate the changes in seasons, we certainly wouldn’t be living here where the seasons are appropriate. Many of you have chosen to live south of here, where winters are not as apparent with cold, snow and ice. Some may well live in places where winter isn’t a factor at all, but then you are faced with severe weather like hurricanes and tornadoes.
I think that is a trade off of sorts. After all, we have to endure those nasty winters to have the pleasantness of those other seasons to have that equilibrium you in the south must cope with. I truly don’t know how climate change will affect future weather long after you and I are gone. I just hope the changing seasons aren’t so drastic, it makes life unbearable.
Jerry Schellhammer 