On Thursday, I was on my bike before dawn, cruising along the Ashokan Reservoir.
The sun was rising, turning the sky pink and purple. Great clouds moved slowly across the open sky. I looked out at the water and saw the sky reflected back at me.
Then they appeared: Canada geese in a giant V, crossing overhead, heading south.
"On August twentieth?" I wondered out loud.
I squeezed the brakes, screeched to a halt, and watched them disappear over the ridge line.
I hopped back onto my bike, moved deeper into the Catskills, and started noticing small changes I hadn’t noticed all week. The ferns along the road were shriveling and turning brown. The leaves overhead were no longer the deep green of summer, but pale green wrestling with yellow. Some of them were beginning to settle on the road.
Somewhere along the ride, long after the geese disappeared, I could feel the sadness settling in. Summer was ending, and I was grieving the change. It felt too soon. I didn’t want it to end, and yet, almost immediately, I started thinking about fall. Apple picking. My birthday. Football. Sweaters.
Then it hit me. Summer hasn’t quite ended, and yet fall is already beginning to arrive. I was riding through a gap in the seasons.
As I was journaling later in the morning, I remembered that the Japanese have seventy-two seasons.
Their traditional calendar begins with four seasons like ours, but then keeps getting more precise. Each season is divided into six solar terms, or sekki. Each sekki is divided again into three kō, roughly five days each.
The kō describe the subtle changes unfolding in nature.
East wind melts the ice.
First peach blossoms.
Frogs start singing.
First lotus blossoms.
Swallows depart.
On August seventh, according to the Japanese calendar, autumn began. I had no idea it came this early. Fall begins with cool winds blow, followed by evening cicadas sing. My Thursday bike ride fell during thick fog descends.
I grew up in New England, so I'm no stranger to four seasons. As James Taylor sang, "winter, spring, summer, and fall." I lived inside that rhythm my entire life and never thought to question it.
Four seasons were the way I had learned to see the year, but that framing also made it easy to miss the subtle changes happening between them. I’ve known this and I’ve sensed it, but something about this ride made it land differently. I could now see what had been unfolding in front of me all along.
This morning, I woke to a thick fog in the backyard.