Being home in the Northeast always helps to reawaken my consciousness of my surroundings. For some reason, the cold of home makes me feel warm. The bare winter trees make me feel alive. And the fallen amber leaves make me feel a part of the earth’s cycle. In Louisiana, we don’t have much of a fall. It gets colder, and some leaves fall, but you don’t get the theatrical change in seasons like you do in the northeast. When I go home and see the change that has taken place since my last visit, I am reminded that the earth is ever changing. It is in a constant cyclical motion. I made sure to take a nice long walk in my favorite park before I left. The sun was low, the air was crisp, and the trees were bare, ready for the coming winter snow. I walked through the tall grasses, listening to the rustling that came from the wind and my disturbance of he patch. I watched my neighbors enjoy the open fields and beautiful landscape. Going to this park always makes me feel home. It is important for me to pay a visit there to remember the earth that I am innately connected to. I grew up in this town, in this environment. I now occupy a new environment in New Orleans, Louisiana. While I explore Louisiana and get to know it’s landscape, I must keep my connection to the patch of earth that I inhabited for 17 years and that shaped my view of the environment.
I think it's interesting to see how much we can identify ourselves through our environment, especially the weather of that environment. For example, I feel that the weather right now is really cold, perhaps too cold, and how I miss the warm summer afternoons. I was talking with a friend who spent Thanksgiving in Colorado, and he find New Orleans to be warm right now. When I mentioned that the weather was too cold, especially compared to the climate back home, he simply stated "Oh, it's because you're Guatemalan," and although I tried to find a way to be offended by that, I realized that his statement was true.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you got to see fall. Alot of times I have trouble understanding your complaints about our lack of color because we do have trees that change in autumn. But when I flew into Charlotte a few weekends ago and saw that beautiful flush of color from a bird's eye view I realized why you miss it. Amazing sight.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I am not from what is generally considered the "northeast," I am still from North Carolina, in the Blue Ridge Mountains to be precise. No doubt about it, we get extended seasons as well.
ReplyDeleteBut what I really wanted to get at was your appreciation of the seasons-- for some reason I always link the idea of Winter with the concepts of introspection and existentialism. Some of the most intense scenes in films are accompanied by heavy rain and a sense of relentless cold that generates retrospection and analyzation within the character's psyche.