Do you mourn the changing of the seasons?

All of them. I really have always liked things as they are. I find any change unsettling. The most difficult is the coming of the bad winter weather, the snow and ice and cold and the difficulty of coping…harder as one ages, but always a challenge.

Remember that the French translate “autumn leaves” as “les feuilles mortes.”

(Listen to Yves Montand singing it and feel your heart crack.

No, I celebrate them!

Feeling nature on one’s cheek, the wonder of the day, the wonder of the year, each season, each day, is another one I get to celebrate! And it sure beats the alternative!

I do, mourn the changing of the seasons, even the ones I don’t really like. And great question because I’ve often wondered if anyone else feels the same way. I have thought about it and decided I am really mourning the passing of time; the seasons are just time cut up into relatively neat chunks and labelled.

I do it now because I am back living in a place that actually has four seasons. When I lived in Portland, OR and Austin I didn’t feel it as much. Also maybe because I am older now and the passage of time is more compelling now.

My mind slips into mourning far too often. But I really do enjoy the change in seasons. There is something about weather that can kick me out of any rut that I am in. It offers some kind of symbolic “reboot”, and can almost seem like I’m travelling while staying exactly where I am.

This became really clear to me when I spent a year in Isla Vista, CA. The weather was perfect there. And when I say “perfect”, I mean perfect. Seriously. However, I’m not sure if it’s the fact that I grew up in New England, but something didn’t seem right. At one point, I realized that I needed a rainy day – some kind of break from the oppressive perfection. So, I had faux bad-weather days. I would close the blinds and pretend it was just a nasty, rainy day.

I am really enjoying these cool evenings and mornings we are having. And while trying to enjoy what we have right now, I can’t help but feel that apple-picking, apple pies, pumpkin carving, etc is right around the corner. Fall is a great time.

Not really. I just feel a bit sad when a season passes. Each weather has its own joy and interest for me. But I don’t really mourn because I know the season will come back soon. There are only 4 seasons and they cycle anyway. I can enjoy New Year’s Eve, my summer holiday, a new school years and Christmas every year.

My feeling is more like: “Goodbye good friend. You have entertained me and I love you. Come back soon, we’ll meet next year OK?”

When I live in a place with four seasons I mourn when summer is ending. When winter ends it is a celebration!

Only when changing from Spring to Summer, because I loathe Summer.

Otherwise, I love them. In fact, the shift from Summer to Autumn is my favorite of all.

Spring to summer is my least favorite changeover, though here, spring often feels like summer. You didn’t ask, but summer to autumn is my favorite changeover.

Never thought about it, great question! I do mourn when summer solstice passes. I lived in the northern part of the US for so long—the shortening of the days is visible and just means a slow daily march towards long nights.

I’m usually excited when I see the first snowfall, the first spring bloom and the first summer rain, but something irks me when I see the first orange leaf… I mourn summer’s end, but celebrate the coming of the other seasons.

I feel a kind of tug of sadness, but I love the fact that there are four distinct seasons each with their own pleasures. With fall, I look forward to the switch from iced tea to hot tea, cold crisp mornings, changing leaves, the end of heat and humidity, snuggling under the covers.

I love changing seasons. I celebrate the meteorological seasons, so I’m counting down the days to Sept 1, when Fall begins!

@marinelife I love having four seasons too and the joys of each but I also feel melancholy as one ends – except for winter!

I think earliest spring and latest summer are special times, their own little mini-seasons. The very end of summer does have a melancholy feeling about it.

I like the change of seasons. I think living somewhere that stays the same all year round must be very boring. By the end of August I’m usually tired of the heat and looking forward to the Fall and changing colors of the leaves.

I admit I’m not crazy about the snow here in the northeast but I like it much better since I no longer have to go to work. Heck, how lousy would Christmas be with sunny skies and temps in the 80’s? nah…..

@BeenThereSaidThat I’ve been in Florida a few times at Christmas and it is really bizarre. Reindeer and palm trees??

This summer the weather has been so glorious that I am not in a hurry to get to cooler weather. I want more afternoons at the beach!

You get used to Christmas lights and palm trees over the years. It is strange at first when you have lived in a northern northern hemisphere climate most of your life.

A lot of the US doesn’t have snow for Christmas just cold. Snow is seen the most in Jan and Feb. The southern hemisphere is in their summer during Christmas, so it is normal for a lot of the world.

I like late spring, early fall and all summer. I despise the rest. I mourn the season once the days get short and the temperatures drop below 65 for a daytime high.

Yes. As summer progresses, the days are noticeably shorter, which I hate. Summer is so bold, associated for me with the fearlessness of youth, the adventure of travel, the tastes of fresh foods – shortening days seem like approaching mortality.

Fall especially can be so beautiful and so ephemeral; the smell of fallen leaves and wood fires, the biting snap of cold air, the saturation of the reds, yellows, and oranges of the changing leaves. It makes me want to do something wild, something impulsive.

Winter feels like waiting, so I never mourn its ending.

And then spring is bursting with life, with potential, like a new beginning every year of our lives. I lay in the hammock, the air too chilly to be out except for the way the sun warms me, winter-pale skin soaking it up. I spend hours with my hands in the dirt, investing, working, hoping for what I will receive when he season changes yet again into summer.

Indifferent.

I like the heat of Summer, the colors of Fall, the crisp air of Winter, and the rebirth of Spring. I could do without shoveling snow, but look at it as a good workout. Heating bills are a pain.

Yeah. Life is so much harder in winter here. In the warmer, longer days, it can feel like the world is on your side, cheering you along as you pursue your agenda. But come January the world withdraws its support; it may be even actively trying to kill you. Color goes away to warmer climes, life goes into hiding. There really is a taste of death to it.

I see these annual slides into darkness as drills—or maybe public service announcements, brought to you by the Universe—preparing us for the Big Winter, teaching us gratitude for the color, the warmth, the ease while we have it, reminding us that it will all go away.

After 12 years of public school during our youth, I think we have an almost Pavlovian response to the end of summer. We’ve been conditioned to expect school to start – something most kids dread. Back in the days when I commuted I noticed that traffic decreased in the summer and increased when school was in session. That merely reinforced the conditioned response well into adulthood.

I do not have air conditioning and there is no practical way to cool my home with wood so I enjoy the cooler days and nights of late summer and early fall. It is perfect sleeping weather.
I still enjoy the challenge of handling deep snow so I don’t mourn the arrival of winter. This will likely change as I get older as evidenced by the large number of northerners who move south when they retire. I’m not at that point in my life.
Bring it on. It’s all good.
And my monster 14hp snow blower is itching to toss a few tons of the white stuff into the air.

No, I look forward to them with wild anticipation. I enjoy the changes of the seasons, and stay in touch with them through the gardening and outdoor work that I do.

This all sounds like a mild case of S.A.D.
I’m not particularly bothered, but I like the transistion from late summer to autumn, darker evenings, cooler temps.

I suffer from S.A.D. fuck winter.

No. I love fall and the last few days the light is changing and a lovely little breeze has been wafting around. I like all the seasons as well but really am coming to despise summer heat. I just came in from deck sitting over here, sipping coffee and watching a large flock of Canada geese grazing on the green pastures of the ranch below this property.

A cool, fresh, dewey morning, bliss out to the 10th power. I can’t wait for fall.

Usually I enjoy the season changes. I especially enjoy the change from summer to fall. I’m one of the rare people who don’t love the summer heat. I prefer the milder temperatures of fall and spring.

Just as part of fall is the death of living leaves, a constant theme in my childhood was death. I also hated school, and I associated going back to school with the death of my freedom for the next nine months.

I don’t feel that way about the seasons anymore. Time and God have healed that part of me, but I remember those feelings well.

I love each season change, although I quickly fall out of love with winter.

Ordinarily I look forward to spring and autumn. This year in the Northeast we have had a very mild summer and I will miss seeing it go.

I love season changes and I would never want to live in a place like Cali that doesn’t really have them like I do here. Ick. It’s unnatural.

@seekingwolf California has very clear seasons, it just takes being in touch with the natural world.

By the way, Cali is a city in Chile….

Since I work outside, I hate the summer heat. I dread it every year! But there is a certain melancholy that comes over me when the weather cools and the kids go back to school.

No I enjoy the change. I can’t imagine staying in a place where the weather remains the same.

I love the seasons and wouldn’t like to live at the equator where there aren’t any. The end of one season is the beginning of another on and on forever. I used to feel melancholy at the passing of time but oddly less so as I have grown older.

Depends. I love the shift from winter into spring. The opposite does not thrill me.

@zenvelo

No snow, no falling leaves in an abundance, palm trees all the time….no thanks.
It will always just be “Cali” to me. Ick. Don’t care for that place.

@seekingwolf – Are you from New England? I absolutely loved California – primarily because most of it can be objectively described as paradise – but family (and a severe lack of money) dragged me back east. I think I would have been able to overcome the lack of oppressive humidity, rain that cancels every outdoor activity, mosquitoes, and 6-month snowy winters if I had more than a year to adjust. I would wake up every morning, step outside every day and be faced with a day that was better than any single day I had experienced my entire life in New England. A few months after moving there, it rained for the first time – for a full 5 minutes. Everyone ran outside and danced in the streets. This is pure insanity for people who were raised with praying for a few hours of decent weather.

@hominid

I am from NY (not the city). I don’t have excessive rain or humidity where I live so I don’t know what it’s like to live with that. Sounds very unfortunate for you.

I’d rather stay here and enjoy less traffic, cheaper rent, and temperate climate. Cali and the big cities out West have never interested me and I don’t understand why people want to move out there.

@seekingwolf: “Cali and the big cities out West have never interested me and I don’t understand why people want to move out there.”

Yeah, I wouldn’t live in a city here (Massachusetts) or California. But what I did like was how less congested an rural California is overall. Upon return to MA, it felt very claustrophobic. Where were the rocky, undeveloped coasts where the redwoods meet the ocean? Where were the beautiful, awe-inspiring deserts? Where were the mountains? When I go to the coast, where are the endless quiet beaches filled with sea lions?

I’m pretty old now, and I don’t think I’m going to relocate my family (unless I got a great job offer), but I do have some regret (useless as it is) about not having settled out west. My interest is the outdoors, and California has so much more to offer.

Mourning the seasons’ changes is not equivalent to not enjoying having seasons. I love living in a place where there are seasons but the transitions do throw me some. And, Fall is back to school – and work for me – for good and for bad.

I wil probably be moving on to California at some point and there are things I love about both West and East coast weather.

Yay for the West. You tell ‘em, jb! They were kind of highjacking your thread anyway.

@seekingwolf Northern California has 4 seasons, and plenty of winter weather, rain, snow, premiere skiing. Southern Ca. is most likely where you are basing your opinions on. Many people do not realize that CA. is a big state and it is not all sunkist beaches but sports the Sierra Nevada mountain range and has many gazillions of acres of foothill and alpine regions, rugged high country mountains and plenty of weather.
I live in one of them in the Northern Sierra nevada foothills about an hour from Lake Tahoe.

Here is a a fall landscape.

www.oceanlight.com/bishop_creek_canyon_sierra_nevada_mountains_photo.html

Not really. I imagine it must be very boring (at least to me) not to have the seasons change. There are things I love and things I dislike about each season, so the changes give me something to look forward to.

I used to mourn the changing of the seasons because the shift always brought on massive allergy attacks. I’ve got a pill for that now, though, so I only mourn the shift to winter these days. Autumn is my favorite season, and winter is my least favorite season, so it’s a bit of a minor tragedy to lose one and get the other.

Watching the approach of fall and of the promise of the cold dark winter to come is depressing. It is a little like watching a loved one dying. The knowledge that spring will return does nothing to lighten the growing weight.

Mmmm. Well, not so much the season as the activities that go with them.

I grew up skiing. I loved winter, in fact it was my favorite season. I hated the approach to winter, but loved it once it had arrived. Part of it was due to the start of school.

I was once told that South Florida has only three seasons; last summer, this summer and next summer!

@Yetanotheruser Not true, Miami and south stays summer-like even through the winter usually, although the summer FL storms still only happen July, Aug, September, and outside of those months it cools down at night. North of Miami there is spring and summer, and they get springlike weather about 6–7 months a year. North of Vero/Sarasota they get cold months in the deep winter months of December, January and early February, espeically night time can be frigid. Within an hour of Georgia it is downright cold for a few months.

A friend of mine said this morning that Northern California has two seasons, Summer and when will it be summer again?

Yeah it does get a little chilly here in Tampa on some days. Nothing even comparable to New England, but still different than the normal 80s/90s. It’s a weird kind of cold that I’ve never experienced before. I’m pretty sure it’s because it’s still uber humid.

@JLeslie I really know that! I lived in the Palm Beach area for a few years in the eighties. I liked it there except for the humidity.

@Yetanotheruser I didn’t know you lived there/here. A lot of people don’t know it. I have people say all the time that it rains every day in FL. Yeah, because they come down while their kids are off from school during summer break. My mother never would have taken us on a trip to Florida, especially not Disney, in the dead of summer.

I kind of like the season changes, keeps me from getting bored. I do have a harder time saying good-bye to summer and fall, winter is easy to say good-bye to and spring gets a big hello greeting because it is by far, my most favorite season. I like the variations of the seasons because the changes help keep me energized.

@JLeslie We moved down to the WPB area right after we got married in ‘88, then to Orlando in 92–94.

We have a few days of fall today. 60’s and breezy.