Late Autumn
November 5 to December 22
The beginning of Frost are the last harvest festivals of Samhain, Holloween. The days are short. Frost becomes Darkness after Yule and shortest day of the Winter Solstice. Midwinter is celebrated throughout the temperate lands: Alban Arthan, Brumalia, Dongzhi, Korochun, Sanghamitta, Shalako, Yaldā, Yule, Ziemassvētki, Saturnalia, Saint Lucy’s Day.
Vast cyclones on wet ground bring floods. And then the clear days bring hard frost. Some years the rain won’t stop for weeks on end. This is a holiday season, when families and friends gather in warm houses, and those without houses face misery in our rainforest climate.
Wild Creatures and Wildcraft
The last salmon are the coho, or silver salmon, which push deeply into the headwater streams. The fall hunt is in the freezer of the good hunters. The mushroom bloom is done with the hard frost. An unreliable mix of rain and snow and sleet drive people out of the foothills and forest lands.
Beaver hear the trickling water and are called to action. They build higher and wider to capture the rain. The tree frogs sing a soft cold song as they return to their wetlands.
REVegetation
The citizens of the leafy kingdom has finally fallen asleep. Tree planters and earth workers don suits of PVC coated nylon and broad brimmed hats, and get to work. All the planning was finished back in summer. Marking zones, digging out, hauling and wheeling, placing, digging in. Every day that is neither frozen or under a torrent we rearrange the forests and fields. Don’t worry about watering, or even leaving roots bare. Branches are cut and stuck in mud. Roots are arranged in cold shallow beds. All the greenery is deep asleep.
You keep warm with tea and gloved hands stuffed in steaming mulch piles. Large breakfasts and labor keep your body warm. Out in the wet you notice that most of the rain isn’t really that heavy. Famous last words, and the sky sometimes rips open in a deluge. Wetlands fill and grown and join until the fully saturated patterns of the earth are revealed.
Frost has kills all sign of the perennial forbs except dead leaves. Plant identification depends on bark color, lenticles, thorn patterns, and the shapes and configuration of bud scales. Weeks of planting create fields of twigs.
THE Garden
Only leaves in greenhouses and the hardiest of species remain. The nibbling weekly harvest of roots and leaves gradually depletes the stock build in the plantings begin in harvest and earlier. There will be no new food until Budswell. Storm damage thrashes at both structures and crops. Hardest frosts take their toll.
Earthworks, Construction and Hazards
Now the climate prods and tests the assumptions of engineers. Floods, erosion, and mass wasting tell a kind of truth. Frost is likely to bring the first floods to the floodplains. Sandbags and rip rap, staged in the dry seasons, are brought into play. Helicopters hover over flooded fields taking pictures and telling stories as trackhoes reach into raging rivers to keep wood from racking on piers. Livestock are moved to high ground. Unstable slopes slump over highways and railroads. Winter storms rip at bulkheads and carve spirals and arcs of sand and gravel. The earth works itself.
Politics and Government
Right after Holloween, in a maic crescendo of mass media the elections come, and then go. Some shake their fists, beaming with pride and newfound power. Others lament in private. The mood of the electorate is endlessly reinterpreted by pundits.
In the remaining time before the state legislative storm, everyone stages their stories, organizes and publishes their lists, negotiates with competitors, and then goes home for the holidays. Back in Washington DC, the congress may or may not do anything of significance, before the holiday recess. This will likely not include a budget. The new year will come.
Previous: Leaf Fall
Next: The Darkness
This post is part of a standing body of work to capture the seasonal nature of our lives, and how they might apply to the work of the Ecosystem Guild and Restoration Camping.