seasons Archives - Ingrid Murray

Darkness Before the Dawn

Today is the winter solstice — the shortest day of the year, with more than 14 hours of darkness.

After today, the light returns.

These past few months have been a struggle. There are 4,000 miles of distance between me and my husband. I am waiting for a visa while clearing out a home, with no real timeline for a final move. Time stretches before me endlessly and, at the same time, I’m unable to plan anything more than a few weeks out.

Several friends have also been waging their own personal battles. Kids and marriages and divorces, health challenges, healing from trauma, so much stress and anxiety. After two (almost three?!) years of a pandemic, we’re all exhausted.

“I appreciate that we can be messes together,” I texted friends tonight. And it’s true. Having friends that show up messy, who love you through your messes, are everything.

But from here, it gets lighter. I’m holding on to that.

My quarterly newsletter goes out on the first day of each season. Read the winter 2022 issue — and sign up, if you like — at ingridmurray.substack.com.

Hey, Autumn

Somehow, suddenly, it’s autumn.

Every year, I say the same thing — and every year, the seasons pass by more quickly than the year before.

It’s still mostly summer-like here in Baltimore: the days are hot (though less humid and the sky a brilliant, cloudless blue) and evenings are still filled with the sound of crickets (but have cooled). The greatest indicator of the passage of time and seasons is the changing light: now, twilight comes at 6:30 pm, and the sun goes to bed noticeably earlier each week.

It’s a good reminder that nature doesn’t exist in black and whites, but on a spectrum and in gradual and constant change.

To welcome the fall, I sent out my first quarterly newsletter to subscribers today. If you’d like to catch up or would like to sign up for the next one, you can subscribe here (it’s free!).

Ode to Summer

The heat in Baltimore has finally broken and it’s under 90°F for the first time in months. It’s lovely — my windows are wide open for much of the day, my cats firmly planted on the windowsills. It’s also a reminder that fall is just around the corner.

When this time of year hits, I spend more time in the present, soaking up every bit of sun and warmth, like Frederick the mouse, and noticing and appreciating all the little things about the season that will soon be a memory. This summer, especially, I am gathering up all the things about this season and this neighborhood.

Change is on the horizon: after five years of living in my current home, this is the last summer I will be here. I want to remember all the little things I have noticed and loved, to remember when it’s cold and dark and I am homesick.

Especially, I want to remember how early summer’s fireflies transition to the late summer sound of cicadas and crickets, and how the goldfinches gather in the thistles in June and July and make their way to the echinacea in August. I want to remember the deer who graze mostly unfazed on the hill behind the new development (and the foxes who played there last winter).

I want to remember the turn of each road, the walks with friends, the little libraries, the impromptu dog park, and how the ghosts of other seasons linger in kinesthetic memory as I pass — snow and holiday decorations, the lilacs and magnolias in bloom, wild cicadas making their 17-year debut in 2021, pumpkins and fourth of July banners.

This is a bittersweet moment. Change always is. For now, I will be present and soak up every moment.

And when he told them of the blue periwinkles, the red poppies in the yellow wheat, and the green leaves of the berry bush, they saw the colors as clearly as if they had been painted in their minds.”
Leo Lionni