We are having such a screwy winter here where I live in the Black Hills of South Dakota and by Mount Rushmore.

And so our weather is mountain west. It's kind of like the front range of Colorado. You get some warm winter stuff.

But generally speaking, I know that the tree across the street turns bright red about a week before

Halloween and then my similar tree turns bright red about a week after their tree turns bright red and there's

just predictability and rhythm to the fall and then in the spring I know that when

certain plants in my backyard pop with a little bit of green here or there you see the buds come up it's like oh that's pretty much it for all of the snow

and maybe we'll get a crazy springstorm but now we're definitely into the warming phase

and next it's gonna be that tree and then that tree and then that tree and then that tree and

you can just predict things even if you didn't have a calendar the rhythms of the

natural world around you tell you how things are and I'm sure it's the same way

wherever you live you live anywhere long enough and you can look out the window and be like,

hmm, smells like March. Or, ooh, I walked outside at night and the parking lot is steaming.

Oh, it's thaw day. The ground is warming up. That

means we can expect this next. Well the people of the distant past were the same way,

maybe even more the same way. They were probably more sensitive to it than we are.

They saw all these rhythms and they could

predict things and they knew what it was like when something was a little bit

anomaly and they probably would note it and be like, oh that's strange look this thing

is doing this thing this year and that's what's been going on with our bonkers

winter here is that I we've had three warm-up periods for like three or four days and

stuff is like should we turn green and I'm out there snapping pictures of them I'm like

oh this is so weird I gotta show my friends,

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