With game seven of the World Series the baseball season came to an end last week. The week also gave us Halloween and the beginning of November. With that we are now at the halfway point between the autumnal equinox and winter solstice.
It’s not by accident that Halloween, All Saints Day, and the Day of the Dead come at this time of the year. Less developed cultures looked at this transition as a “thin time” where one could pass from this world to the underworld with ease. In Greek mythology Persephone returns to Hades every year when the pomegranates ripen to assume her role as queen of the underworld. And in a sense the transition from the busyness of fall to the dormancy of winter is a symbolic passing to another world.
Conversely the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, too, is also a time of passing. And again, not by accident, it is celebrated by the tradition of Groundhog Day and Candlemas. They are an acknowledgement that winter cannot last forever and that it will soon be time to get busy again. Ironically, the first awakening of the baseball season occurs a little more than week after Groundhog Day when pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training.
The bosque (cottonwood forest) along the Rio Grande in Albuquerque, too, is not immune to laws of nature and is in a period of transition. Here is some of what I noticed while wandering through it this past week.
The summer flowers have long turned to seed, but the fall flowers are still hanging on.
A summer flower along the Rio Grande in the autumn.
