I Don’t Trust August

I've always been suspicious of August. In the grip of a steely January chill, the promise of August is always one of beaches, cookouts, and fresh mowed grass. It's the mental masquerade that allows us to lump July and August together as one hazy, nebulous memory of summer; the promise of everything that is not January.

It's when we enter into August, however, that we are called to remember the darker half of the year; the slumber of the seasons. June's gentle green tendrils had apexed with the jungle like foliage of July, only to decline. So it goes, when as the seasonal cycle of youth has passed that we are left with the yellowing age of August. Fields of wheatgrass raise their golden heads to the sun; still potent, but taking on a more earthward slant. Odd maple leaves turn red; seemingly off cue. We make excuses for nature. We reason that a particular tree is not well or that the branch must have been damaged in the winds of a thunderstorm. What we know deeper down is what we have known throughout the ages; time is passing. We pass these signs with a flippant air; a red leaf, the presence of goldenrod, a gray hair; in a post modern denial of nature's clock that still tugs at the soul.

August is a juxtaposition of meanings, as the oppressive heat and humidity reminds us to labor and the occasional dry chill reminds us to gather; to prepare. It is a month that causes us to praise the virtues of air conditioning while questioning the integrity of the weather stripping all at once. It is our nod to our more primitive selves; the knowledge that beyond the computer and cell phone, we are part of the land and the cycle of seasons which govern it.

Making Things New Again

Spring has a way of washing away the drab. The corners of our towns that had grown tired and stark from months, blasted by cold and covered by the accumulations of debris like a receding glacier of silt and Starbuck's cups, are once again witnessing a rebirth. The verdant earth reminds us that concrete and asphalt are only temporary jots placed in a landscape that will not be restrained by mere human effort. The leaf strains through minute cracks in a driveway, a pennant raised defiantly at the eastern sun.  A crack runs down a foundation wall as nature sighs; relieved of the weight of winter's slough, and there, there in the crack peeks the tiniest sprig of moss. Budding leaves blossom forth, stretching from tender shoots among aged limbs of the hoary oak; straining to reach each other across a wooded lane. The scar below lies unsuspecting; a line cut through this forest more than a century ago; a division intended to split the wood with a ribbon of society; linking building to building, concrete to concrete. The venerable trees wait, showing the restraint of many lifetimes, until the road once again vanishes amid a tangle of roots and leaf.

This is spring and we are reminded of the impermanence of our creations; our own clever devices against a flow that has always existed. The renewal of nature and it's Beltanic dance restores our hope. It deposits seed and spore in the hard places of our soul; the cracks along the foundation. It raises the banner of new life in the smallest chink of those parts of us, worn smooth by stubbornness, and accepted as permanent over time. Spring is our second chance, again. The empyrean sun has again begun its journey; no longer intent to skirt the horizon, but now to pass directly over us, banishing winter's shadows and revealing all.

And so, we reflect on another spring; our renewed lease on life and with it, the zealousness of the root that breaks the concrete. Together we should seek to be like the green shoots, taken as a whole, having the ability to tear the hard places of the earth asunder. Where we see hardened minds, let us plant the seed. Where we are divided by the seemingly impenetrable, let us crumble it with our strong roots. Where we encounter hard words like steel and glass, let it pass through us as the May breeze through the birches. We are, after all, a community of hope; cultivating, nurturing, and caring for nature's young until they too, may stand among us.

~C. Douglas M^cIntire