No Going Back

Knowing the natural world from being in it bodily, not so much from any kind of formal study, I am not surprised that climate change has made me feel topsy-turvy. Radical shifts from what had been normal manifest even in my yard and the woods around me. This year the already unsettling autumn-turning-winter part of the year has been even more unsettling. The timing of leaves coloring varies some every year, but this year it was all over the place. Tulip Poplar and Black Gum are always first and the oaks last, for instance. But this year lots of trees were turning when the Poplars started. Many oaks, especially red oaks, colored and dropped just after the Poplars, before the maples had barely started their show. Yet a few oaks held high crown leaves as usual, becoming achingly scarlet just before letting go, the last of the color to fall.

Thankfully, the forest floor is still familiar. As the last reds become scarce, my eyes are adjusting, able to see a fall rainbow of muted tones. From pale peach through every kind of caramel and copper, multiple moods of brown, and deepening grays, the decomposing leaves and fallen bits of trees perform a constant show of change. The textures, shapes, and patterns are a collage that turns audible when you walk through it, sounding off your footsteps. It is a ritual I have come to depend on, one that has happened every year of my life. Nature used to be that.

Clematis bloom in late November, visited by a honey bee.

Now nature is more like the the stunning purple clematis engaging in odd behavior outside my door. This is a spring blooming plant, or so it had been for the past twenty years of its life climbing on our wire fence. This year it decided fall was spring again, and in early September grew a whole bunch of new leaves and viney stems then began popping out bud after bud. It has been blooming ever since, despite the fact that we’ve had four or five frosts over the past six weeks, into the upper 20s a couple times, even. On Dec. 4, it still had five blooms and a few buds coming, though most of it has become brown leaves and fluffy seed heads.

This gaudy plant, with its purple “shouldn’t be here now” blooms, tells me that I’m living in a very different world from last year’s. The change of seasons used to make me think of cycles, how things come back around just when you’ve forgotten about them. Now changes in the natural world around me are of a different character; the behaviors of plants I thought I knew is suddenly unfathomable. I don’t have faith in that circling dance of seasons anymore. Instead, it’s a “you can’t go back” chant I’m hearing from the universe, at least the small space in it I can tune in to. Will I learn to accept that the place where I live is not what it once was? How can I not grieve for what has been lost? I don’t know. I do know that nature’s loveliness, what I can see at one time with my own eyes within the microcosm of a walk in the woods or across my yard, sometimes overpowers those questions.

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