Thinking About Getting Into: Nature

I'm thinking about pastoral elegies, and about how they are two things in one: an act of mourning and an act of idealization.

He disappeared in the dead of winter

is how W. H. Auden begins his elegy "In Memory of W. B. Yeats." Everything, it seems—or at least the most cherished, most irreplaceable or beloved—dies in the winter. W. B. Yeats died on January 28, 1939, in Cannes, France. These days, the average temperature in January in Cannes is 46 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm thinking about how winter is as equal a feeling, and a sentiment, as it is an actual season with actual, specific weather patterns and averages. I'm thinking about the natural world.

I live in a city—The city, I once proclaimed to someone who didn't even live in the New York Metropolitan area just a year after I moved here for school, not even thinking that my city would be what they consider to be their city. I didn't express it possessively because you cannot own a city, just as it cannot own you.

It has been a long time since I've walked around in nature, but when I venture to leave my apartment, I can't help but take notice of it. Maybe the sparseness of it draws the eye to it more directly, or the departure from it as a whole induces a quickening when re-exposed to it. When I return home to the suburbs, all I can see and smell and taste are trees, trees, and the grass, most delicious of all when it's freshly shorn and dressed in rainwater.

I have taken to bringing plants into my white-walled bedroom. They seem to add life to the space and keep me company when I find myself paralyzed in the moment, nervous to exit the place that I have deemed the safest of all. This is not unique, or special, or wholly out of the ordinary, but lately, I can't help but remember all the plants that have died under my watch—the joke of it all that gets played out over and over in Instagram posts about succulent-killers and bad plant parents and the hopelessness of it all. I don't want them to die. I am anxious, for the first time, for winter to come.

In the past year I've found myself reverting to things that comforted me as a kid; namely, video games, namely, those in the Animal Crossing and Story of Seasons (née Harvest Moon) universes. I'm drawn to virtual worlds where things are simple, changing slowly so that one may prepare for them. I catch bugs and fish. I plant flowers or crops. I talk to villagers if and only if I want to. Each day presents a series of tasks. I complete them, and decide if I would like to do anything extra. Often, I leave it at that.

There is a consistency in the earth that's paralleled in the social world in only the most disappointing of ways. The sun rises and sets. The trees bloom and leaves fall. Those who come into power abuse it, and those who hurt reap no comfort. It goes on and on and on. I think about patterns, and how hard they are to break. But then I think of the changing planet, the melting ice caps. I think, often, of the reckoning that is coming for us all, that will surely come sooner than we think, and will offer no compromises.

I think of winter.

I read on Twitter or Tumblr or somewhere on the internet that gourds are only ready to be picked when their vine is dead. I fact-checked it. It's true.

It's become a basic thing to love autumn, but this, I embrace regardless. Summer does not sit well with me; I feel suppressed and hot and angry, especially in a sticky, cramped subway car. The very first day I can open my window to feel a cool breeze, I feel like myself again. I light a candle and burn some incense, watching the tendrils of smoke loop around my dresser and flow outside through the window's screen. I go to the farmers' market with a new sense of purpose. I buy sourdough and heat it in my cast iron skillet, and tear it apart, dispatching crumbs everywhere. I walk outside and don't feel the air pressing in on me. I buy gourds, now knowing the sacrifice that was made for them.

Now is the time when the veil between our world and the otherworld is at its thinnest; is this because in winter the two will become one? I have to wonder.

I think often of witches, in general, and many know this as a key interest of mine, but in fall, they seem more present. Are they preparing for the hard times that will come, or are they celebrating the harvest that has been collected? Are we in mourning, or is this simulation a form of idealization?

Fresh notebooks, particularly inky pens, seeds, peppers, the even face of a brown farm egg all remind me that tabula rasa can exist in different forms and states. Still, I think, how roots and soil and ground can hold trauma and memory and feelings for decades.

It's hard to see the trees change color in the city, and over the course of these past six years I'm still not sure if they even do. Maybe it's because the ones that do undergo the change individually, and not as part of a group. Before I know it, they're all barren.

The two large plants I've acquired over the summer are still living. One, after a week of neglect, drooped considerably, but became amenable to being nursed back to health. The other stands tall, accepting a good, strong drink once a week. I feel confident that I can watch over them and keep them alive. This time, I will actually pay attention. I'll listen more, and better.

I look a lot at photos of different places upstate: houses for sale, farms, restaurants. I dream one day of owning a space, surrounded by trees—not suburban, no—but settled in some clearing of nature, situated not far from a meadow or a farm: a place to tend to, and fill, and decorate, where I could spend weekends if not a greater quantity of time, and rent out during any residual moments. A fireplace. A bookcase. An herb garden and perhaps some vegetables.

Last week at the farmers' market the man before me was told that it would be the last day for peaches. This past Sunday, peaches remained. I realize that timelines don't always measure up to our predictions, and sometimes the sweetness can last for longer than we might expect. This should be celebrated.

I suppose my time in autumn might best be spent in preparation: canning, preserving, fermenting. Harnessing the freshness and newness that the season grants me with generosity, and distilling it so that I might have something leftover to stay warm and nourished and not hungry by the time winter rolls around. I suppose I should enjoy the apple cider and the doughnuts while they are present.

Some of the farmers, I've overheard, continue to grow things in greenhouses to extend their season. Otherwise they prepare, and they prep. Spring, they know, will be here before we know it. They know it. Underneath my settled layers of doubt, I know it, too.

I check on my villages in Animal Crossing and Story of Seasons when I need a short and specific distraction, and I keep a close eye on my plants. I might even buy a new one this weekend, but only if I can get enough work done before then. I think it might be worthwhile to buy some new soil or look into fertilizer, or reposition things so that the light hits just right. Nature exists in ways unchangeable, and I by now know that I should change myself instead.

With a farming of the verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,

A dying plant can be nursed back to life, if only you could distinguish its exact ailment.

Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

We are beholden to the trees and their memory, and even if we uproot them, the soil remembers.

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,

It is possible to both move on and retain your foundation, and this, I think, produces the strongest crop of all.

In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.