The
Five Seasons
Bill Meredith
Fall didn’t live up to expectations this
year. An unusually wet summer led us to expect
the leaves would be brilliant, but we got almost
no rain in October, so they shriveled up and
showed as much brown as red and yellow, and they
gradually began drifting off the trees after the
middle of that month. Then came November 8, the
Day the Leaves Came Down; we got an inch of rain
that evening, accompanied by high winds, and the
next day the trees were bare. When I went out to
get the paper that morning and saw them, my mind
went back to an idea that has been bothering me
for the past ten years or so. As usual, it
involves some bizarre connections; bear with me.
Theodore Geisel must have known that the odds
were against his name becoming a household word;
it’s hard to remember, and doesn’t roll off
the tongue musically. So, wisely as it turned
out, he appended his academic title and his
middle name to his literary works, and became
known instantly and for all time as Dr. Seuss.
His genius was to write children’s books
using a minimum of different words, repeated in
a variety of patterns, so pre-schoolers could
memorize the stories easily and begin to
associate the written words with their sounds.
Our kids, and I expect those of everyone who
will read this, grew up on Green Eggs and Ham
and Yertle the Turtle, and they learned to read
more easily as a result. Most of the stories
were told in rhyme, the likes of which no one
had seen since Ogden Nash, and illustrated with
wackily original drawings; and each ended with a
moral youngsters could understand.
My favorite was Bartholomew and the Oobleck.
The hero, Bartholomew, was a servant boy in the
royal palace, and evidently the only person in
the whole kingdom with any common sense… a
ten-year-old worry-wart. The trouble began when
Old King Grimulkin decided four seasons were not
enough for his kingdom; winter, spring, summer,
and fall, with their snow, rain, sun, and fog,
were not sufficient. So he ordered his Royal
Magicians to create a fifth season, when
something new should come down from the sky; and
as you probably recall, the result was
disastrous.
I always think of Dr. Seuss and Old King
Grimulkin this time of year. Autumn, it seems to
me, is not a well-designed season. I’m too
much of a traditionalist to want to get rid of
it altogether, but I do think there is a serious
need for improvement. It is supposed to be the
time when crops are harvested, birds migrate
south, and leaves turn color. All of those
things happen in late September and October, but
then around the first week of November we always
get a storm and all the leaves come down. Then
we still have nearly two months of autumn left
until winter gets here… not a satisfactory
state of affairs at all. What we really need is
a new season to put in this time of the year.
The basis for having seasons in the first
place was established independently by many
prehistoric cultures. Even on different
continents, ancient astronomers came up with
surprisingly accurate determinations of the
solstices and equinoxes, and more remarkable
still, they did it without knowing why the
seasons exist. When I first learned these
things, sometime in elementary school, it gave
me a sense of pleasure to contemplate a year
perfectly divided into quarters on the basis of
the orderly progression of the earth around the
sun. I liked things that were logical and
orderly; so later I was dismayed to find that
the seasons really occur because the solar
system is not perfectly or logically organized.
The seasons actually occur because the earth’s
axis of rotation is tilted over some 27 degrees;
and things are further complicated because our
orbit around the sun is an ellipse rather than a
circle. It was disturbingly illogical for me to
learn that in the Northern Hemisphere we have
our summer when we are farthest from the sun,
because at that time we are tilted so its rays
hit us directly and are absorbed, heating us up.
Likewise, in winter we are closer to the sun but
tilted away from it, so the radiation comes in
at an angle and reflects away, leaving us
colder. I thought to myself, with the arrogance
only a child can get away with, that if I had
designed the solar system the earth’s axis
would have been straight and the orbits circular…
not realizing that under those conditions we
would have no seasons at all.
It took many years, but eventually I came to
accept the fact that things aren’t necessarily
perfect or logical; and now I even like it that
way. I have come to think it isn’t so
important to have four equal and symmetrical
seasons; instead, what we need is a system that
reflects reality more accurately. It would make
more sense to have a new season, of variable
length, between fall and winter. Fall would end
on The Day the Leaves Come Down; winter would
begin on The Day of the First Real Snow. In some
years, if we didn’t get a real snow the new
season would go clear through to spring and we
could skip winter… no loss there… and in
other years we might skip the new season if it
was a real snow that made the leaves come down.
Flexibility might be good for us.
There would be some problems, of course.
Leaves and snow come down at different times in
different parts of the country, so the new
season would not start and end at the same time
everywhere; but that would add to our individual
uniqueness and make each place more special. We
would have to resurrect Antonio Vivaldi long
enough for him to write an additional piece of
music for the new season; but failing that, we
could commission someone else to do it in his
style. We would have to come up with a suitable
name for the new season, but that could be
assigned as a contest for school children, with
appropriate prizes. Other problems could be
assigned to a bipartisan commission and dealt
with as they come up.
I would suggest that the new season be
dedicated to contemplation. At least in
Emmitsburg, it would usually include
Thanksgiving, which doesn’t get the thought it
deserves most of the time. Election Day would
usually come around the beginning of it; that
would give us something to ponder about,
assuming the votes were counted before the
season ended. We could have TV specials devoted
to the art of contemplation; or, better yet, we
could ban television and make people read books
until the season ended. Old King Grimulkin may
have been right after all; four seasons are not
enough. A kingdom like ours needs at least five.