2 posts tagged with "Seasons"

There is, I have long maintained, a profound dignity in doing absolutely nothing. The olive tree outside my window understands this. It has not produced a single fruit since November, and I respect it enormously for that decision. But the olive tree is merely dormant. It has not, as far as I can tell, reduced its heart rate to four beats per minute, dropped its body temperature to near freezing, or gone several months without eating, drinking, or visiting the bathroom. For that level of commitment to inactivity, one must look to the hibernators.

There is a fig tree behind my house. It is old, possibly older than me, though I would not care to confirm either number. Every spring, without fail, it produces its first leaves within the same five-day window. Not a calendar date chosen by committee, not a notification pushed to a screen, not a forecast hedged with probability percentages and a corporate disclaimer. The tree simply knows. It reads the soil temperature, the photoperiod, the accumulated warmth of the preceding weeks, and it acts. It has done this, I suspect, since before Nikolas Faros was born, and it will continue long after his teleprompter falls silent.