Your place has a unique climate that affects how you live. This month we’re going to be focused on the climate of your place. Climate is considered to be the typical weather pattern for a region, based on averages over thirty years or more. The length of the days and seasons, their dryness and wetness, fluctuate each year. Noticing fluctuations from the norm gives the concept of climate change relevance in our lives and activates our relationship with the earth.
What season is it in your place?
A season is defined as “a time characterized by a particular circumstance or weather feature.” Depending on where you live, you may experience the four seasons of winter, spring, summer, and autumn. Or, you may have a wet season and a dry season. The seasons quite naturally frame our lives.
With the advent of industrial work and systems to moderate heat and cold, we’ve become much less impacted by and tolerant of seasonal changes. We can easily escape from extremes inside our homes or by travelling someplace else when it’s too cold or too hot. Here in Niagara, it’s deep winter, characterized by sunny skies, ice formations, and extreme cold. In February, I escaped the cold for a couple of weeks to get some warmth in Florida.
In Japan, they have what they call 72 micro-seasons, with each season lasting 5 days. I love this because it provides a much more detailed and nuanced look at seasons. Each micro-season has a name which paints a picture of what is going on at that time, for example, “east wind melts the ice” or “silkworms hatch.” Here’s a good summary of the 72 seasons.
Reading the Day
How do you begin your day? For me, it’s a cup of coffee while reading the news and checking email. Maybe you meditate, exercise, write, or read a poem. If you’re working or have small children or grandchildren, you may not have time to do anything but shower, get dressed, grab a bite to eat, and get out the door.
In his fabulous book, To Know the World, Mitchell Thomashow suggests an exercise called ‘reading the day.’ It’s a way to begin each day by observing/reading your environment. All you have to do is step outside first thing in the morning and “feel the temperature, wind conditions, light, sounds and smells, or whatever visceral impressions fill your senses.”
Beginning on February 6th, I did this every day for five days. I jotted down my impressions after stepping outside. At the end of the five days, I looked for common threads and came up with a phrase for that week’s season - ‘Bright blue skies mean fresh, crisp air.’ For that week, the micro-season in Japan was ‘Spring winds thaw the Ice.’ Japan’s seasons are similar to mine but we definitely weren’t seeing signs of thaw yet.
Practice
Try this for yourself. If you can, begin each day this week by stepping outside and reading the day. In her book, Wabi Sabi, Beth Kempton offers questions to help you tune into nature and the current season. I’ve adapted them below.
What does the air temperature feel like?
Where is the sun?
What is the light doing?
What types of clouds are in the sky?
What plants or animals do you see?
What are the seasonal colours, sounds, smells, and textures?
What else do you notice?
Note your observations in your journal or on your phone. At the end of the week, use your observations to come up with a sentence to describe that week’s micro-season. Please share in the comments or on Instagram (adding #seeingyourplace2022).
Resources
72 Seasons App - very detailed and well worth downloading. It’s free.
Book: To Know the World by Mitchell Thomashow
Highlights and shadows, balanced.