Seasons

If you’ve been reading my past few blog entries, I probably come off as a very serious person. That’s not entirely true. I certainly can’t call myself “carefree” but I also have become a person who doesn’t easily let myself get stressed out. Emily asked me about it recently and it made me think a little further on it. The following is a continuation of my thought process. I do want to note that I realize how fortunate I am in my situation (healthy family, stable job, strong support system, etc.) and do not want to insinuate other people who have stress are doing it wrong.

I’ve heard people often say things about “seasons of your life,” generally indicating a particular struggle or situation. “This is just a season and it will pass.” Or something like that. However, I’ve found life to be much more natural and cyclical, which to me is actually an incredible comfort.

If you’re familiar with my wife and I, you probably have picked up on our lifestyle and interactions with nature. Emily has jumped into gardening in a big way over the past several years. I am mostly a hunter/gatherer and am thrilled to put food on the table that I provided with my own two hands. Hunting, foraging, and gardening, aside from the food element, have one very important factor in common: they are seasonal.

Each season is an opportunity and it is limited. Morel mushrooms grow for only about a month and then they are gone. Generally, for me, this is from late April to late May. It can be stressful because I don’t want to miss that window of time and in turn, miss out on morels. But then again, they will be back. And more than that, what comes next? Nature provides such an abundance to look forward to. So does life!

But back to morels. I have been hunting morels for about five years. The really cool thing about them is that they tend to pop up in the same areas if conditions don’t change dramatically. Generally, they relate to certain species of trees and will grow within 30 yards of a particular tree. Dead or dying Slippery Elm trees are my favorite. Four years ago, I found my first “patch” and brought home a few pounds of morels. Since that year, that spot has continued to produce varying amounts, but it has been fairly consistent. What this has allowed me to do is get to that spot quickly, and gather morels every year, even if I don’t have much time. However, when I do have time, I wander and look for new spots. In the years since I found my first patch, I have added six others with varying yield. I’ve even “given away” spots that I found that I don’t have time to get to because of distance. This year, near the end of May, I was walking through an area I hoped to be productive, and I came upon dozens of giant morels. But I was too late. They were water logged, buggy, and rotten. You’d think I’d be sad, but I wasn’t. I was thrilled! This was a new spot that produced giant morels! And they’ll be back next year!

Examples abound in nature on how knowledge and experience make life richer and more enjoyable. We learn from our “mistakes” and experiences, and rather than seeing them as lost opportunities, we should see them as opportunities to do better. Life is short, so they say. But it’s not that short, right? I’m thirty-six years old and if I stay healthy, I can remain active for another thirty-six years. That’s thirty-six more springs, thirty-six more summers, thirty-six more falls, and thirty-six more winters. Each with their own unique opportunities and each with an ever accumulating bank of experiences. And during that time, I can learn and do better, and pass on all that I know to my children or anyone who wants to hear.

Not all of life is like picking mushrooms in the woods and I would never want to trivialize it. There are certainly tragedies that can be difficult if not impossible to move past. Some situations will not necessarily repeat and allow you to do better. In those times, it’s ok to be sad, stressed, or depressed. But don’t stay there. As cliché as it may be, we do only get one life to live. A season as this doesn’t pass, nor should we try to make it do so. It is an experience, much like the ones of joy, that become the zeitgeist of our lives. And our lives themselves are part of a collective experience. There’s an inherent responsibility in that to pass on and improve whatever you can, but there’s also a relief in your own limitations. With that, I’ll leave you with another Bob lyric:

Life is sad, life is a bust. All ya can do is do what you must. You do what you must do and ya do it well. I'll do it for you, Honey baby, can't you tell?