About a year ago, a friend told me (Michael) about the Japanese Microseasons. Instead of our Gregorian calendar, which divides one earthly orbit of the sun into 12 months or 52 weeks, microseasons break the year into 72 brief, nature-based segments, such as— Peonies bloom (April 30–May 4) … Wild geese return (October 8–12) … Deer shed antlers (December 27–31) … Poetic, animistic, and suggestive of ritualized noticing? As a penitent ex-tech worker—15 years guiding people ever deeper into their screens, all from a desk in seasonless Silicon Valley, who then discovered birds and promptly blew up his life—I had to learn more. Ragwort flowers (Sep 23–30) But reliable info on the calendar’s origins was hard to find online, so I was left to daydream. I pictured enrobed sages moving slowly through foggy valleys and hilltop villages, their forest-bathed attention interrupted only by the sudden CLACK of a shishi-odoshi. They’d pause by burbling streams to consult ancient scrolls, allowing a quiet smile when, just as predicted— Rotten grass become fireflies (June 11–15). Such reverence for the rhythms of wild nature certainly feels mythological these days. We, Homo skyscrapius—go-getter primates of steel and glass—live largely divorced from the natural world. Our landscapes and ecosystems are plundered in the name of “development.” Our mental lives are colonized by “advancements” in tech—mostly addictive, phone-shaped unrealities. Pin Oak reddens (Nov 25–Dec 1) Our devotion to growth and stimulation has made a return—to pristine nature, to our truest selves—feel impossible. And yet. Since I watch birds, I already follow a kind of alternate, quasi-animistic calendar. An NYC birder, in broad strokes, might read a year like this: —Strange ducks and geese inhabit city waterways (January) —Common Grackles return (February) —Eastern Phoebes reappear (March) —First-wave migrants arrive; strange waterfowl depart (April) —Northbound migration hits its vibrant peak (May) —Warm, quiet weeks; migrant breeders linger (June to mid-August) —The slow, muted wash of southbound migration (Mid-August to late October) —Strange ducks and geese return (November–December) Because I knew the birds were still here, and that most New Yorkers no longer saw them, it struck me that the same might be true for flora, insects, fungi, and subtle shifts in weather I’d never learned to notice.
About a year ago, a friend told me (Michael) about the Japanese Microseasons. Instead of our Gregorian calendar, which divides one earthly orbit of the sun into 12 months or 52 weeks, microseasons break the year into 72 brief, nature-based segments, such as— Peonies bloom (April 30–May 4) … Wild geese return (October 8–12) … Deer shed antlers (December 27–31) … Poetic, animistic, and suggestive of ritualized noticing? As a penitent ex-tech worker—15 years guiding people ever deeper into their screens, all from a desk in seasonless Silicon Valley, who then discovered birds and promptly blew up his life—I had to learn more. Ragwort flowers (Sep 23–30) But reliable info on the calendar’s origins was hard to find online, so I was left to daydream. I pictured enrobed sages moving slowly through foggy valleys and hilltop villages, their forest-bathed attention interrupted only by the sudden CLACK of a shishi-odoshi. They’d pause by burbling streams to consult ancient scrolls, allowing a quiet smile when, just as predicted— Rotten grass become fireflies (June 11–15). Such reverence for the rhythms of wild nature certainly feels mythological these days. We, Homo skyscrapius—go-getter primates of steel and glass—live largely divorced from the natural world. Our landscapes and ecosystems are plundered in the name of “development.” Our mental lives are colonized by “advancements” in tech—mostly addictive, phone-shaped unrealities. Pin Oak reddens (Nov 25–Dec 1) Our devotion to growth and stimulation has made a return—to pristine nature, to our truest selves—feel impossible. And yet. Since I watch birds, I already follow a kind of alternate, quasi-animistic calendar. An NYC birder, in broad strokes, might read a year like this: —Strange ducks and geese inhabit city waterways (January) —Common Grackles return (February) —Eastern Phoebes reappear (March) —First-wave migrants arrive; strange waterfowl depart (April) —Northbound migration hits its vibrant peak (May) —Warm, quiet weeks; migrant breeders linger (June to mid-August) —The slow, muted wash of southbound migration (Mid-August to late October) —Strange ducks and geese return (November–December) Because I knew the birds were still here, and that most New Yorkers no longer saw them, it struck me that the same might be true for flora, insects, fungi, and subtle shifts in weather I’d never learned to notice.
