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An Indian Summer
Oct. 30th, 2022 04:01 pmAttending an event yesterday in the city, the sky was cloudless and everything had a faded look in the pale November sunshine. The mercury reached as high as 68 fahrenheit. It was only a couple of weeks past an early snowfall, but in the city, there were maple trees that had not yet shed their leaves. In the meadows farther out, bluebirds still sing in the treetops and the sound of insects is still heard. The drought that began in the summer is still going strong, and even a late season thunderstorm made little impact on it. Scorpio season has arrived along with the feeling that the year 2022 has flown past in the blink of an eye. The year had no shortage of personal events, but it seems somehow quiet and unremarkable in comparison with the past few years.
I have been around to various corners of my region, though not nearly so much as on some previous years, and there are very strange things to be seen all over. The Minneapolis metropolitan area and its immediate surroundings are filled with lakes, though my current location is not. The lakes are all as low as I’ve ever seen them. Some of the ones I have visited lately included Hyland Lake, Wolsfeld Lake, and White Bear Lake. These lakes used to have very high water – small observation: the 2010s were probably historically high water periods and unusually moist years for the most part – and now they have dirt beaches that you could use to walk the entire perimeter. Nevertheless, the eagles and fish hawks remain in the area so things must not be totally dire. Perhaps the fish are easier to catch.
Owing to the high gas prices and a ridiculous amount of road work, I limited car travel during the summertime. Both of these conditions have improved somewhat. Premium fuel is back under $4/gallon, and the road closures that made transit across the region a nightmare have been scaled back to the level of a minor inconvenience. There was but little maintenance the past two years, a situation that had to be remedied. In fact, more of the same is planned for next year – the interstate is in dire shape, filled with divots holes, only some of which were fixed in the past year, and there will be much more to come. However, these conditions did not keep people inside during the summer: it was very busy on the roads. The combination of a long winter and pent-up frustration from a roller coaster two years led to frantic activity.
Still, there is a strange sense under the surface that something is not quite right. There’s a hint of desperation in all of this frantic activity. The social fabric of America was already in something of a shambles before the pandemic hit, and after it, most of the trends that were already well-established have got even worse. Sociologists have been studying the problem for some time[1], and the general condition is alienation and isolation. Friendships have withered for many people, and family formation is way down. Interacting with some younger folks on occasion, I see that social skills have attenuated to a level that would’ve been considered quite barbaric in my youth. And this, I add, is among the children of what remains of the bourgeoisie, who would’ve known better in a previous time. I do not, however, blame them entirely for this: rather, it’s an indictment of everyone that things progressed to this.
I have striven to make this space more or less apolitical, because I’ve lost faith in the ability of the political process to work in a meaningful way for average people. There is an election coming up, and American politics have turned into an ever more bizarre clown show. I half suspect this is being done on purpose to suck people back into a dysfunctional system from which they have increasingly tended to disengage. Disengagement is actually dangerous, far more so to the people benefiting from the system, than opposition or insurrection would be. There need to be participants for a spectacle to go on. I can’t blame those wanting to disengage for not wanting to be on the menu as the next sacrificial lamb in an age of violent mob hysteria and intemperance. If one thing remains worthwhile, it would probably be engagement with one’s local politics – however, a great effort has been made to divert all attention to the national scale, which seems increasingly meaningless in such a gigantic and heterodox country. Perhaps we can see ourselves as a confederation, but we are long past the point that we are really one country at all, and the largely artificial pop culture driven by centralized media in the past century is falling apart at the seams.
So at present, there’s just an uneasy feeling of watching and waiting. But in noting some of the things that have gone wrong in this country, we can also see some obvious solutions. Community is what is lacking. This is difficult to remedy when the mode of life for Americans for so long has been endless migration, like grazers from one watering hole to the next. We are not a country of peasants rooted to the land for generations (although the gods know the Amish are trying to become something like this). I was reflecting on this today before I wrote this piece. I’ve been guilty of excessive selfishness in the past, and in my own personal life, I could improve the situation by giving and helping more in the communities that matter to me. This is mainly how good will is built, and I’ve been too neglectful of that. I can make it a resolution to do my part to remedy this; however, I can’t control what the other person is going to do. However, I imagine there’s a kind of karmic exchange here and that good will is at least partly repaid from good intentions.
These are the thoughts on my mind as I watch an unusually beautiful late October Sunday unfold before me. Hunting season is coming soon and it will change the pattern of the local wildlife, but until then I can count on seeing deer and turkeys regularly at the feeder. All of the local birds are still coming in regularly. The first sign of changes ahead did, however, make itself known, with flocks of juncos (a kind of black and white sparrow that comes with cold weather) arriving with the snow a couple of weeks back. Migrants have been passing through since the autumn began in earnest, and even on a day like today there is a whisper of the inevitable winter to come. Uneasy feelings aside, the pageant of nature once again instills a sense that all is as it should be. The prolonged Indian summer, with all the local wildlife going on their merry way blissfully unaware of the troubles in the world of mankind, has added an edge of optimism to my will in spite of it all.
[1] - a recent example.
I have been around to various corners of my region, though not nearly so much as on some previous years, and there are very strange things to be seen all over. The Minneapolis metropolitan area and its immediate surroundings are filled with lakes, though my current location is not. The lakes are all as low as I’ve ever seen them. Some of the ones I have visited lately included Hyland Lake, Wolsfeld Lake, and White Bear Lake. These lakes used to have very high water – small observation: the 2010s were probably historically high water periods and unusually moist years for the most part – and now they have dirt beaches that you could use to walk the entire perimeter. Nevertheless, the eagles and fish hawks remain in the area so things must not be totally dire. Perhaps the fish are easier to catch.
Owing to the high gas prices and a ridiculous amount of road work, I limited car travel during the summertime. Both of these conditions have improved somewhat. Premium fuel is back under $4/gallon, and the road closures that made transit across the region a nightmare have been scaled back to the level of a minor inconvenience. There was but little maintenance the past two years, a situation that had to be remedied. In fact, more of the same is planned for next year – the interstate is in dire shape, filled with divots holes, only some of which were fixed in the past year, and there will be much more to come. However, these conditions did not keep people inside during the summer: it was very busy on the roads. The combination of a long winter and pent-up frustration from a roller coaster two years led to frantic activity.
Still, there is a strange sense under the surface that something is not quite right. There’s a hint of desperation in all of this frantic activity. The social fabric of America was already in something of a shambles before the pandemic hit, and after it, most of the trends that were already well-established have got even worse. Sociologists have been studying the problem for some time[1], and the general condition is alienation and isolation. Friendships have withered for many people, and family formation is way down. Interacting with some younger folks on occasion, I see that social skills have attenuated to a level that would’ve been considered quite barbaric in my youth. And this, I add, is among the children of what remains of the bourgeoisie, who would’ve known better in a previous time. I do not, however, blame them entirely for this: rather, it’s an indictment of everyone that things progressed to this.
I have striven to make this space more or less apolitical, because I’ve lost faith in the ability of the political process to work in a meaningful way for average people. There is an election coming up, and American politics have turned into an ever more bizarre clown show. I half suspect this is being done on purpose to suck people back into a dysfunctional system from which they have increasingly tended to disengage. Disengagement is actually dangerous, far more so to the people benefiting from the system, than opposition or insurrection would be. There need to be participants for a spectacle to go on. I can’t blame those wanting to disengage for not wanting to be on the menu as the next sacrificial lamb in an age of violent mob hysteria and intemperance. If one thing remains worthwhile, it would probably be engagement with one’s local politics – however, a great effort has been made to divert all attention to the national scale, which seems increasingly meaningless in such a gigantic and heterodox country. Perhaps we can see ourselves as a confederation, but we are long past the point that we are really one country at all, and the largely artificial pop culture driven by centralized media in the past century is falling apart at the seams.
So at present, there’s just an uneasy feeling of watching and waiting. But in noting some of the things that have gone wrong in this country, we can also see some obvious solutions. Community is what is lacking. This is difficult to remedy when the mode of life for Americans for so long has been endless migration, like grazers from one watering hole to the next. We are not a country of peasants rooted to the land for generations (although the gods know the Amish are trying to become something like this). I was reflecting on this today before I wrote this piece. I’ve been guilty of excessive selfishness in the past, and in my own personal life, I could improve the situation by giving and helping more in the communities that matter to me. This is mainly how good will is built, and I’ve been too neglectful of that. I can make it a resolution to do my part to remedy this; however, I can’t control what the other person is going to do. However, I imagine there’s a kind of karmic exchange here and that good will is at least partly repaid from good intentions.
These are the thoughts on my mind as I watch an unusually beautiful late October Sunday unfold before me. Hunting season is coming soon and it will change the pattern of the local wildlife, but until then I can count on seeing deer and turkeys regularly at the feeder. All of the local birds are still coming in regularly. The first sign of changes ahead did, however, make itself known, with flocks of juncos (a kind of black and white sparrow that comes with cold weather) arriving with the snow a couple of weeks back. Migrants have been passing through since the autumn began in earnest, and even on a day like today there is a whisper of the inevitable winter to come. Uneasy feelings aside, the pageant of nature once again instills a sense that all is as it should be. The prolonged Indian summer, with all the local wildlife going on their merry way blissfully unaware of the troubles in the world of mankind, has added an edge of optimism to my will in spite of it all.
[1] - a recent example.
