Late Spring comes to an end throughout the East this week as the high canopy of leaves closes all the way. Even though the sycamores may hold back for a week or so, now there is a convergence of events that pushes the land over the edge into early summer.
I first noticed the effect of the seasons on my mind when I spent a year in the tropics. The homesickness I experienced was not so much for family or friends, but for the deciduous trees and the sharp air, the flowers I had ignored, and for all the changes I had taken for granted and from which I drew so many other conclusions about my life.
The sense of home that I brought to the Caribbean continues to gives me a sense of myself, and it colors my subsequent travels. And whether I come back here or adopt a new home somewhere else, I know how the process works.
So the very essence of local time and place is that it creates the ability to transcend its own limits. It is also exemplary and a form of introduction to the wide world. A sense of place is transferable.
The closing canopy brings a new season no matter what the date, the latitude or longitude. Once the touchstones are identified, and once I find home, I can not only go back to it again, I can bring it with me across land
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the transition week to early summer. In the meantime, take a trip. You can not only come home again; you take it with you.