Stick Season

Everyone is talking politics this week. But my writing here is not about that. It is about rural life and culture. Two things which are reasserting themselves at present. There is a season to everything and right now it is springtime for rustics and small towns. Even as outside it is very much not spring. It is stick season in New England. That liminal interval between when the last leaf falls and the first snowflake does. Gone are the leaf peepers and the weekenders. It is dreary save for a few bright sunny days we have left to ourselves.

November is a hard month. If, as Camus said, autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. Then stick season is an echo of winter yet to come. When all is laid bare without a blanket of snow to conceal it. It is vulnerable. The darkness comes on fast at the end of waning days. Many begin to retreat inside at this point but that only makes winter longer. It may be that is why it is so important that we give thanks at this time of year. That we fill our homes with light, and warmth, and abundance to defy the grey landscape to affirm that we are going to make it.

Stick season is too much sky for native New Englanders. But I was born in Iowa where there is nothing but. I get the urge to build and write and make art. Like trying to get things out of me that there is suddenly space in the world for to stop carrying them around. Even though practical concerns are actually far more pressing. Did I run the mower out of gas? Do I have gas for the snowblower? Did I test the generator? Is there enough firewood?

All my neighbors are preparing as well. There was a big line to vote in my little town, and you could tell we all had better things to do. Bear sightings have increase so the police brough in Fish & Wildlife to give a talk. We are going to a Holiday Market in the Town Hall this afternoon. We have a planning board meeting the week after next. Then we are all getting ready for the church's annual Christmas Fair and Bake Sale the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Last year I baked a a pumpkin cheesecake for it that sold pretty well.

We all keep moving forward and so should you. Maybe the next four years will be your stick season. Then again it could be your springtime. But whether politics makes things easier for you, or it makes them harder, in the end you have got to handle your own shit. I remain, as ever, cautiously optimistic. But regardless of how you feel about it, remember that we do not get to choose the time we live in, only what to do with the time we are given.