The Collapse LII: Seasons

December 07 20XX

My Dear Lucilius:

It has been snowing here almost incessantly: deep, fat flakes that continue to fall from the sky, leaving everything covered in a thick white shroud. It rounds off the edges of all things and leaves them a soft, white, formless blanket.

Lovely to look at. Less lovely to have to deal with, of course.

I have had to do all the normal chores, of course: check on the quail (thus the ropes I string between the house and the greenhouse). Occasionally pull the snow down off the roof to prevent an eventual collapse. Bring wood inside for the fire.

And watch the snow fall from the sky.

The snow quiets everything. It always has; I have no idea why. I suppose if I desired a rational reason it would be something about the muffling effect the snow has on ambient noise, how it cuts down on outside activity overall - after all, who or what in their right mind goes out in a snow storm?

I am sure there is a scientific reason grounded in fact. I prefer to believe it is some inherent magical quality of the snow.

The sky has a different cast to it when it truly snows. I cannot define it for you any more than I can define the cast of the sun at the moment that Autumn arrives: it is nothing I can evoke in words, it is just something that I realize almost instinctively.

Being here, having fled the world of work some years ago, I have developed an appreciation for the seasons that I did not already have. During my years of corporate labor, the seasons and weather were something to endure: commuting in darkness or almost darkness made the sunrise and sunset sources of light to gauge if I needed to use my car’s headlamps, working inside all day made the summer heat or winter cold irrelevant except as a backdrop when entering and leaving the building.

But here, now, living as I have these last years, gives one a greater appreciation for the seasons. The arrival of the seasons is present far earlier than most can sense it if only one will pay attention. Here especially, with our relatively short summer months, one waits with baited breath for the moment that Spring planting can begin and sighs with inner defeat when Winter arrives more quickly than anticipated. The sunrises and sunsets increase and decrease with the year; if one lives by its light (instead of that of the power lines) one comes to appreciate even one additional minute.

The interesting thing to me is that once upon a timeit was only those that cared about the seasons for their livelihood – farmers, ranchers – and those that had the time and leisure to do so – the retired, the unemployed, those that sought such knowledge – who really noticed such things. Now, suddenly, we are all involved in the Great Dance of Equinoxes and Solstices, of the waxing and waning of the moon, of the Coming of Spring and the Departure of Summer. Before it was just a hobby or perhaps an adjunct to a career; now it has become something by which life or death may be decided.

If we are not careful, if this becomes a long tern way of life and we do not rebuild, will we not become as our ancestors, gathering before rocks thrust up at the sky like angry fists as our shamans and priests tell us that the Great Cold Season will soon be passing?

The snow continues to fall from the sky. Are the flakes more fat in December than in February? I never really thought about it before. Now, I certainly have the time to consider it all in great detail.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca