Looking through kaleidoscopes

It may have been lockdown that unlocked something for me. I used to simply divide the year into four seasons. It was a moot point about when one season bowed off the stage and the next one appeared, but the four seasons were the fundamental way that I defined the annual natural cycle.

In lockdown, like so many others, I noticed more; I paid closer attention to the natural world. The time when the traffic was hushed and even planes weren’t tracing the sky brought the seasons into focus and unlocked them. In that time a more intricate pattern became apparent to me – I awakened to the joy of micro-seasons. What I mean is that subtle progression of changes that happen day-by-day in hedgerows, in the meadow and in the treeline. I can see that each season is a book filled with many chapters and only now am I attending to them.

In the last week, I have been noticing how the horse chestnut trees are already brown and curled, while the leaves on the weeping willow that I can see from my study are just starting to yellow. The crack willow behind is further advanced and it is beginning to shiver its leaves into the river that runs past it. The sycamores in Oxford look wonderful, but they’re yet to reach their golden peak. The last of the apples on our tree are ready to pick.

You might say that I was rather slow on the uptake – nature has been turning these complex annual cartwheels in plain sight and it has taken me nearly half a century to wake up to it. I also know that those who live more closely with the land are connected to micro-seasons from childhood. However late I’ve been on the uptake, what a pleasure it is to observe the myriad transformations in our landscape with the kaleidoscope of shifting micro-seasons.

James Whitehead is the CEO at the International Tree Foundation