Motus Mentis

Thirteen years ago I wrote a post entitled Fall Guy, in which I noted that, whereas the summer and winter are seasons of stagnation, balanced upon the solstices and ending more or less as they begin, the spring and fall are times of movement and change:

The seasons move in a cycle, and one might graph them using the familiar sine curve that is pressed into service to depict so many other cyclical phenomena. At the “peak’ of the curve is the summer, when the Sun makes its maximum excursion northward, and at the trough is the winter, when the sun shines most directly on the lands south of the Equator. At these extremes we have a stultifying sense of stasis ”” the “dog days’ of summer, and the “dead of winter’ ”” when time seems almost to stand still. If you were to draw a tangent to the sine curve at those points, marking what in calculus is called the “derivative’, or the instantaneous rate of change, its slope would be nil. But at the midpoints of the curve, the places where the line is neither at peak or trough, but is at what is known as a “zero crossing’, the rate of change is at a maximum, and this is where we find ourselves in the fall and spring.

At the time, I had a clear preference for the fall:

Of the two, many prefer the spring, but give me the autumn ”” I love the beautiful colors, the crisp snap in the air, the rich bounty of the harvest, and the return to serious and purposeful work after the torpor brought on by the summer’s ghastly heat.

That was when I was fifty years old. But as I turn sixty-three tomorrow, I’m not so sure. I still love the fall, but perhaps I’m just a little more appreciative of renewal these days — or maybe it’s that, at long last, I’m starting to notice, for the first time, the way that cold gets into an older person’s bones. (Or maybe I’ve just had enough of having to clear a steep driveway every time it snows.)

Whatever the reason, I can’t remember ever having felt more gladness at the arrival of spring than I do this year.

Here’s Doctor Johnson with some thoughts for the season, taken from the April 3, 1750 edition of the Rambler:

There is, indeed, something inexpressibly pleasing in the annual renovation of the world, and the new display of the treasures of nature. The cold and darkness of winter, with the naked deformity of every object on which we turn our eyes, make us rejoice at the succeeding season, as well for what we have escaped as for what we may enjoy; and every budding flower, which a warm situation brings early to our view, is considered by us as a messenger to notify the approach of more joyous days. The spring affords to a mind, so free from the disturbance of cares or passions as to be vacant to calm amusements, almost every thing that our present state makes us capable of enjoying. The variegated verdure of the fields and woods, the succession of grateful odours, the voice of pleasure pouring out its notes on every side, with the gladness apparently conceived by every animal, from the growth of his food, and the clemency of the weather, throw over the whole earth an air of gaiety, significantly expressed by the smile of nature.