What does it mean to celebrate the changing seasons in a world with a changing climate?

What effect does the cycle itself being altered have, magically and spiritually? 

This is something that I have thought about before, ages ago, and my answer to this is… complicated and a bit of a union of contradictions. On the one hand, as winter dies and summer becomes eternal, as the transitory seasons fade into little more than dates on a calendar, to celebrate them regardless is to keep alive their cultural memory, to honor what has been lost in a world that has forgotten. The meanings, then, shift but stay the same as powers are altered and injured. Most important to this is the factor of climate destabilization that comes with the changing climate, of course, which provide the last, rage filled hurrahs of dying spirits. 

The following is, of course, local to my conditions. 

The sun ceases to be a giver of life. Winter becomes a mild balm. The Earth brings forth her greatest monsters to destroy us from June to November, with only a slight reprieve until the heat and storms return come spring. Summer is no longer the season of fertile fields and harvests, but of every leaf and blade of grass wilting and drying and crumbling into dust. There is no longer a mild, transitory spring; it has been altered into a vengeful, chaotic spirit that brings burning heat by day and freezing cold by night. Summer is Hell, it is Fever, with the heat’s cruelty only interrupted by raging storms. Fall has almost entirely ceased to exist. For me, the seasons’ meanings have swapped places. 

The Earth is angry, it is being assaulted, to celebrate her former glories, to remember the change of the seasons, is to know our own transitory nature upon her surface. We have inhabited this place for only a short while. What is a grain of rice to a mountain? Our buildings will crumble, precious little will be left of us when we cease to exist, but the Earth will continue spinning, continue birthing new generations long after our species is forgotten. 

So why celebrate? Why not mourn? 

Because what is now and tomorrow lost will not be lost forever. The Earth remains. The meanings may shift, summer may become death and winter may become life, transitions may be lost for a time, but the Earth Remains. The seasons will return one day, whether it be in our lifetimes or long after humanity has ceased to exist, and to celebrate them now is to remember the past and hope for the future, to celebrate them rather than mourn is to pay respect to the Earth that birthed us.

-Ally Nguyen

The sun wakes us earlier and dips behind the western ridge later each day. The snow has fled to cooler climes and in its place pours rain, sometimes as a drizzle and sometimes in gusty sheets. Next week we’ll have our first day in the 70s since winter, and the heat after all that wet will bring with it thick clouds of flies. No amount of scraping of manure off the barn floor will stop this; no amount of fly tape and bait jars, no volume of apple cider vinegar splashed into standing water can hold back this tide. We do what we can to forestall and mitigate the flies, and we always seek better means and methods, but some things are simply inevitable. It is written. The eggs are laid, the maggots will hatch, and the swarm will take flight.

For longer than all of us have been alive, the seasons had a pattern: sow, grow, collect, reflect. We still act as if that pattern holds true. My neighbors have their starts growing, high tunnels and greenhouses nursing the futures of these small farms in rich black loam. Our goats have carried their kids almost to term, and in the next week there will begin a joyful splattering of milk and blood. We act as if the season of grow will follow this sowing, and we hope that the season of collection will follow that. But these years, more than those in living memory, there is a difference between what is hoped for and what is likely. Each equinox or solstice that does not bring outright calamity with it is seen as a surprise gift, unexpected and without any assurance of return. Each calamity we survive is respected for the harsh wisdom it offers.

So, on this the vernal equinox, we get our starts prepped for planting. Our goat stalls are filled with fresh clean bedding, ready for delivery. And our fly abatement program is in full swing despite the inherent futility of the project. We put in the work needed now to have the possibility of a harvest in later seasons, while actively pursuing resilience strategies to mitigate the inevitable calamities.

Spring is here. It’s time to wake the fuck up.

-Maggie Hagg