The spring and fall equinoxes are astronomically identical. The sun rises and sets at the same times and reaches the same height at noon, delivering the same amount of energy to the Earth’s surface.
The spring and fall equinoxes feel very different. On September 21 temperatures can easily reach 90 degrees, and frost is unlikely even in the coldest parts of the US. Summer drought persists, and wildfires burn across the western states. On March 21 it is commonly 50 degrees or colder, with frost on almost a daily basis and Midwestern states still under a blanket of snow.
The seasons lag the sun. Snow and ice cover reflects sunlight, maintaining cold in the face of longer and brighter days. Chilled oceans and landmasses keep a wintery weather pattern in place even as the cycle reaches its halfway point, the time of equal day and equal night (equi-nox). In September we see the opposite, as warm oceans and landmasses maintain summer patterns of atmospheric circulation until the system loses enough heat that change becomes inevitable.
Meteorological inertia.
We live and work in buildings constructed from old-growth timbers, from iron mined from rich deposits long since exhausted. We rely on pipes and wires and dams and roads constructed decades ago when materials were more abundant and prices were lower. Costs for new construction have skyrocketed and will continue to do so as our drills stretch to four miles deep to reach the last oil and gas and our mines turn to lower grade ores. For as long as the built environment can survive, we reap the benefits of an age of excess.
Resource inertia.
The world’s best tennis player is still banned from entering the US. Because the gears of our bureaucracies move at the speed of cold molasses, we remain one of a handful of nations still requiring covid vaccination for foreign travelers, a full 18 months since it has been clear that vaccination does not prevent infection and vaccination status therefore has no bearing on public health. For similar reasons we are still removing our shoes at airports.
Bureaucratic inertia.
By most measures the economy remains strong despite the fact that wide swaths of the country can no longer afford housing, food, medical care, and other basic needs, while costs are rising faster than wages. Debt continues to rise in the false hope that an era of growth will return even as resource limits drive up the real costs of everything from food to fertilizer to fuel. In short, the official state of the economy does not reflect current conditions.
Economic inertia.
I wonder what George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and Ben Franklin would think of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the NSA and CIA and FBI, if they could travel 250 years forward to see what has become of their “more perfect union”, their carefully crafted system of checks and balances designed to maintain democratic governance in perpetuity. We owe our continued stability to the foresight of previous generations. How long can it continue in the face of growing polarization, incompetent leadership, and corporate capture?
Political inertia.
Our great-great-grandparents rode the first trains and plugged in the first light bulbs. Our great-grandparents drove the first cars. Our grandparents climbed aboard the first jets. Our parents programmed the first computers. Our generation saw the rise of the internet and the cloud and AI. Many among us still assume that this “arrow of progress” will continue even as critical infrastructure begins to crumble and scientific “breakthroughs” become rarer, smaller, and less relevant to our lives.
Worldview inertia.
Summer lasted until October 21 last year, and this winter seems poised to last well into April. The longer the old patterns persist beyond the conditions that created them, the more rapid the change will be when it inevitably occurs. It would seem that the strange turning of the seasons is mirroring the growing dissonance of human systems, testing the limits of exactly how long trends and structures and paradigms can remain in place in the face of changing underlying conditions.
Some choose to believe that nothing has actually changed, that we are experiencing some small hiccups on the path to renewed stability and growth. Others choose to believe that we inhabit the last days of civilization, soon doomed to collapse into bloody chaos and survival of the fittest and luckiest.
I do not find either of those outcomes likely, but I do know that change – rapid change – is inevitable with only a question of timing. Like a superheated glass of water ready to flash into steam at any moment, the systems that surround us and influence our lives – governments, economies, institutions, belief systems – are metastable. Which is to say they have the outward appearance of stability belying a growing fragility.
The challenge, I find, is to embrace uncertainty: to know that change is coming but not exactly when or exactly what that change will look like. I would take solace in the turning of the seasons, but even the seasons are a bit confused. Still, the seeds are sprouting. The daffodils and crocuses and daphnes are blooming, in the Pacific Northwest at least. Turkey vultures and swallows are returning. Mourning doves call in the mornings, and frogs in the evenings. Trees that have seen five hundred cycles are preparing for another.
I cannot abide the status quo, and so I look cautiously forward to impending change. I aim to be a part of building new economies, new communities, new institutions that will replace our fragile and ossified behemoths. And yet some grounding is necessary. I watch the sun rise precisely in the east. I feel the warmth of the noonday sun. I poke my nose into mossy cliffs and trees to absorb the scents of springtime, the molecules of photosynthesis. I wait for Venus to appear in the western twilight. I give thanks to be alive on this wondrous planet, whatever the future may bring.
Happy Equinox everyone!
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Great essay! I’ve shared it around.