Essays From West of 98: Living in Season

Considering the natural way of living of our ancestors

Several months ago, I shared my reluctance to make New Year’s resolutions around January 1. That newsletter sparked some interesting conversations with some friends and readers about the topic. Those conversations revealed that I am not alone in my thinking, which was an encouraging revelation.

Whether we like it or not, we humans still have innate biological instincts that harken back to the days before modernity took over and reshaped our lives. You may not have any ongoing desire to live as a hunter-gatherer or in a purely agrarian fashion, but your ancestors and mine did both at some point throughout the generations. Their lives, their knowledge, their instincts, and their rhythms are hard-wired into our DNA.

Not to go too far off topic (I’m good at that), but we see a lot of activism trying to push livestock off of grasslands in the name of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. There are a lot of reasons why that’s bunk (that’s not the point of today’s writing), but one significant reason why it is illogical and unscientific is that grasslands evolved biologically in symbiosis with grazing animals. The plants themselves are wired to thrive when grazed and subjected to further animal disturbance. In the absence of millions of bison, we must use cattle and sheep wisely for the plans to thrive.

I think if anyone has a halfway belief in good and sound science, they understand that all of God’s creation has similar development in its system, be it a plant, an animal, fungi, an entire ecosystem…or a human. That includes living within seasonal cycles. All that DNA and instinct of our ancestors? It is still here for us to utilize to live in the best manner for which we were designed, just like those livestock and grasslands.

“Spring,” by Joseph Rubens Powell (National Gallery of Art)¹

As I started thinking about my resolutions for the spring, I could not help but think about embracing life within the seasonal cycles. There’s a lot that goes into this and a lot that we can do amidst the modernity of 2024, beyond just procrastinating for a few months in making our resolutions. Expanding our garden has given my family the opportunity to focus on it as a source of exercise, recreation, and food. It causes me to think about the seasonal availability of fresh food. Like many of you, I enjoy the ability to purchase most fruits and vegetables 12 months out of the year. In reality, that availability defies the course of human history, the development of natural food systems, and living seasonally. Dating back just one or two generations, our ancestors ate fresh fruits and vegetables when they were in season. They canned or otherwise preserved the surplus and ate that during the rest of the year. When they ran out of fresh and canned options of a certain food? They didn’t fly it across the ocean to make it available. They simply ate other things until the seasons cycled back around.

I’m not trying to tell anyone they should change their diet wholesale to fit the seasons. It would be a challenge for me to successfully do that and it might require an adjustment period over time. But there are many things that we can do to incrementally live more in tune with the seasonal cycles that our ancestors found so natural. We can embrace our natural rhythms and sleep cycles, instead of pushing ourselves to stay up late and “get things done.” We can spend more time outdoors in the long daylight hours. We can use the short winter days for rest and repair of our tools.

There are many small and meaningful steps that we can take in many aspects of our lives. Frankly, this will be healthy for us in ways that we probably don’t even realize. If you lived more in tune with the seasons, how would you start? And how do you think it would impact you?

James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and the Rural Church and State and West of 98 podcasts. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to him wherever podcasts are found. Check out the West of 98 Bookstore here.

1. Shout out to my Substack friend

Sam Scott

for pointing out the wide variety of public domain imagery available through the National Gallery of Art. You’ll see more of those images appear in the future newsletters. Go subscribe to Sam’s newsletter

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