With the many distractions life has to offer, it is all too easy to let the seasons slip by and wonder where an entire year has gone. This site is an effort to observe the seasons with intentionality. Each season documents ways to observe the moment, pulling often from pagan traditions.
Where long the shadows of the wind had rolled,
Green wheat was yielding to the change assigned;
And as by some vast magic undivined
The world was turning slowly into gold.
Like nothing that was ever bought or sold
It waited there, the body and the mind;
And with a mighty meaning of a kind
That tells the more the more it is not told.
So in a land where all days are not fair,
Fair days went on till on another day
A thousand golden sheaves were lying there,
Shining and still, but not for long to stay—
As if a thousand girls with golden hair
Might rise from where they slept and go away.
“Can I ask you one more question?”
“Sure.”
“Have you already decided on the next barn to burn?”
This caused him to furrow up wrinkles between his eyes; then he inhaled audibly through his nose. “Well, yes. As a matter of fact, I have.”
I sipped the last of my beer and said nothing.
“A great barn. The first barn really worth burning in ages. Fact is, I went and checked it out only today.”
“Which means, it must be nearby.”
“Very near,” he confirmed.
I walked around with a map, penciling in X’s wherever there was a barn or shed. For the next three days, I covered four kilometers in all four directions. Living toward the outskirts of town, there are still a good many farmers in the vicinity. So it came to a considerable number of barns—sixteen altogether.
I carefully checked the condition of each of these, and from the sixteen I eliminated all those where there were houses in the immediate proximity or greenhouses alongside. I also eliminated those in which there were farm implements or chemicals or signs that they were still in active use. I didn’t imagine he’d want to burn tools or fertilizer. That left five barns.
Every morning, I still run past those five barns. Not one of them has yet burned down. Nor do I hear of any barn fires. Come December, the birds strafe overhead. And I keep getting older. Although just now and then, in the depths of the night, I’ll think about barns burning to the ground.