Eventually, We’ll Get There.
Board Member Rev. Aaron Stockwell Wisman
I love adventuring in the outdoors because the seasons teach me something. Chances are good; you’ve heard this joke before: “You know here in (insert state name here), we have five seasons: winter, spring, summer, fall, and *blank* season with the blank being anything ranging from mud season, construction season, to mosquito season, sugaring season. Those were the ones I was familiar with growing up in Massachusetts. On some level, it’s a sort of harkening back to the months as described by numerous indigenous peoples - a month may be called the Wild Rice Moon, the Maple Syrup Moon, or the Hard Crusted Snow Moon (from Winona LaDuke’s General Assembly Ware Lecture in 2010).
Years ago, when I was new to living in Kansas, I asked my friends on Facebook about their fifth season; one person commented that sometimes, where they live, it can seem that they experience all four seasons in one day as early as March. Another said that in Cleveland, where they live, it’s only three seasons: summer, winter, and gray. My former music director in Kansas said that in the fifth season, there was a pothole season. Christians observe liturgical seasons, including Lent, Advent, and Ordinary Time. I recently learned that ecologists often use a six-season model for temperate climate regions, which are not tied to any fixed calendar dates: prevernal, vernal, estival, serotinal, autumnal, and hibernal.
What each one of these fifth seasons illustrates is that perhaps the key when describing seasons in our lives is not what the calendar says but what the natural world around us is doing. My favorite (well, okay, the one I am most familiar with) fifth season is the dual season of mud and maple sugaring season. The snow has melted, and the times when it gets below freezing are rare. The sap trickles up through the maple tree roots. The snow has melted, and yet the chances to get your car stuck in the mud seem more likely.
One winter, when I was growing up, my grandfather and I tapped two maple trees in our yard. We put the sap buckets on the tree. It took a very long time for the sap to flow and to fill the two buckets. We poured the sap into a pot on the stove and boiled. And boiled. And boiled. And then boiled some more. We ended up with a tiny amount of maple syrup in the end. It was a little disappointing. But that syrup was some of the sweetest and best I had had. We made it ourselves.
An acquaintance of mine who is a high school principal said that in the academic year, there is a sort of metaphorical maple sugaring season. In sugaring season, you collect everything that has come up during the school year so far, and you boil it down, finding the sweet stuff. It is indeed intense work.
Situated between winter and spring, the mud season made hiking trails impassable. My parents’ driveway was unpaved, the center of which would usually transform into a mire of mud about this time of the year. We’d erect sawhorses and barricades to prevent people from driving into the center. The snowbanks that had been plowed during blizzards were now just mounds of dirty ice. We’d spend a few days raking back the dirt and rocks. Soon, the mud would dry, the trails would become passable again, and the trees would bloom once again. But mud season, when it was in full swing, was miserable.
I’m reminded of some lyrics from the song “Woyaya,” which appears in Singing the Journey, one of the hymnals of my faith tradition: “It will be hard we know / And the road will be muddy and rough, / But we’ll get there, heaven knows how we will get there, / but We know we will.” No matter how challenging or muddy the road is, eventually, we’ll get there.
