As I write this, I am sitting at the Atheneum, Nantucket’s public library, listening to my favorite classical music, Antonio Vivaldi’s "Four Seasons." And I am reminded that the metaphor of seasons has served as the soundtrack of my life since we sold our house and stuff last year to move to this remote, romantic island.I mentioned in an earlier post that my wife and I visited Concord, Massachusetts, the home of Henry David Thoreau, on our way here to Nantucket, and it was there that I jotted down a couple of quotes from Thoreau that captured my seasonal sentiments: “My friends ask what I will do when I get there. Will it not be employment enough to watch the progress of the seasons?” and “While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons, I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me.”
Upon hearing from our Florida friends of another 80-degree Christmas Day, my wife and I congratulated each other on our migration to the northern climes of New England. I am a native Virginian and so am used to experiencing seasonal weather, especially during the holidays, and while my wife is a native Floridian we used to live in Georgia and Oklahoma, where we had some semblance of seasonality.
Since moving to Nantucket we’ve been regularly reminded by the locals what unseasonably warm weather we’ve enjoyed, which has made for a particularly nice transition for my wife, but we are looking forward to some snow accumulation and not just the flurries we’ve gotten so far. All in all, we are very much enjoying ourselves here, so much so that we are considering moving here longer term. But in the meantime, we are celebrating this season of our lives.
