I’ve decided to reintroduce “From the vault” posts. This one is something I wrote as a short memoir in 2006.
Just Another Season
At the cusp of fall, once-green trees transform to vibrant shades of red, orange, and yellow. Eventually, this foliage turns to brown, and soon thereafter the leaves desert their branches. It is around this time when my dad solicits a huge blue tarp from our shed, raking the leaves onto the big blue mass, and then throwing the bundle over his shoulder to carry it to the woods behind our house. About a week later, our undressed lawn becomes a shade of untouched, unflawed white.
With the days getting shorter and shorter, the trees are aware of the chilly months to come and knowingly prepare. During winter, trees shut down and live off food they’ve stored for the season. Because of this, the green chlorophyll disappears from the leaves—and voila!—beautiful colors take their place. The leaves actually contain small amounts of these pigments all along, though masked by chlorophyll deposit green.
Unfortunately, this colorful foliage remains for a very short period. While a tree’s roots and trunk can endure the cold of winter, its thin and brittle leaves can not. Thus, trees must shed their leaves in order to survive the snow and ice. I’ve always attributed falling leaves to seasonal affective disorder, winter depression caused by lack of sunlight. Empty trunks always look so sad and desolate without color. I suppose I’d be bitter too if I were them: self-sacrifice is hardly an ideal course of action.
There is a saying that change is the only constant in life. Nonetheless, I’ve always wondered why we immediately expect change to be bad. Change can work wonders, move mountains, and cure us in glorious ways. New attitudes, friends, and locations can be refreshing and energizing. What’s more—changes in these aspects of life can reveal a new you—one that may have been searching to break free, much like the bright pigments overpowered by chlorophyll. In the end—these changes could in fact save you—despite the sacrifices you make for them.
Autumn leaves are vivid and colorful; as a result, the transition to winter is harsh. Snow is never ending as it encroaches upon every crevice of land. At Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, we hardly see the sun after October. Surrounded by a monotone landscape of whites and grays, we are consumed by itchy scarves and mornings of frost. During these weeks, students and professors each experience their own form of seasonal depression, hopelessly falling in line with the death and monotony that surrounds them. Clarity levels drop from satisfactory to well-below average. Trudging through snow to class drains every ounce of energy we managed to withhold in fall.
When spring finally arrives it’s like the entire campus has been revived, thrilled to have expelled the cold and drear, to regain sun and light and all that is good. Spring represents hope and happiness, renaissance and rebirth.
Every winter morning, my roommate and I check weather.com before heading out to class. This ritual, although very necessary for layering’s sake, has become a discouraging start to my days in Hamilton.
“It’s 17 degrees, but feels like 10 with 60% chance of snow. Accumulation less than an inch, but still, better bring gloves,” I yell to her as she brushes her teeth. What I’ve come to notice is that accumulation is never more than an inch in Hamilton. It flurries every single day, but the storms are nothing like New England winters. In Massachusetts, when it snows, it really snows. It’s not unusual to wake up to two or more feet of powder after a nor’easter. I imagine one could make a pretty decent living owning a plowing company in the suburbs of Boston. And to tell you the truth, the weather at Colgate makes this very venture an appealing ‘Plan B.’
Today was the season’s first snow at Colgate. While walking back to my dorm, I found myself bundled from head to toe, cursing the weather and wishing I’d worn thicker socks. After passing under a bridge, I threw off my hood, glad to open my squinty eyes in this safe haven. I heard laughing in the distance and noticed kids sledding on clear, plastic trash bags. I stopped, turning back to view the newly blanketed campus.
Weather and emotional well being only go hand-in-hand because we let them. What we often forget is that although the colors are bleak and the air seems to bite, winter is beautiful in its own way. I love the way evening shadows reflect in the white or how flakes slowly fall like virtual particles from some strange world. Winter is time and again confused for a state of mind; we let it consume us. Yet it is, after all, just another season—just nature’s way of showing us that beauty varies in its form.
(photo courtesy of D. Sharon Pruitt)
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