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Poor Will's Almanack: April 15 - 21, 2014

Julie Kertesz
/
Flickr Creative Commons

The first seasons of the year are already gone now, bloodroot season, violet cress season, twinleaf season, snowdrop season, snow trillium season, so many more seasons. I've only watched a few of them, and I am wondering about what I've missed. They are fragments of a story, the meaning of which has always set me wondering.

I wonder about the meaning of the seasons of the landscape because I am wondering about my own seasons and what they mean. I watch them, and I am in suspense because I don't know exactly how they will turn out.

Each year, spring always overpowers winter, finds fulfillment in the summer, teaches all the lessons of the beauty and the power of procreation and decay, is sealed in the tomb of December only to rise again triumphant in April.

I watch the story every time as if it might be my own story, but I am never quite sure that it is mine, or I do not know why it is, or how, and then when the year’s plot unfolds all the way, that's never quite enough for me, and so I start over. What did I miss last year and the year before? Why am I still in suspense? Why can’t I believe? I read the book again. What will it say this time?

This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the final week of middle spring. In the meantime, watch your story. See if you can figure out how it ends.

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Bill Felker has been writing nature columns and almanacs for regional and national publications since 1984. His Poor Will’s Almanack has appeared as an annual publication since 2003. His organization of weather patterns and phenology (what happens when in nature) offers a unique structure for understanding the repeating rhythms of the year.