To each season there is one moment.  This moment cannot be planned, it is just suddenly there and you find yourself living in it.  Various things contribute to it, things that perfectly combine to define the season.  Generally, at least for me, no one else is around when the moment comes.  It is a display of nature seemingly just for me, no matter how subtle or grandiose it may be, and it reminds me of why I love the changing seasons here and enjoy each one for very different reasons. And throughout the years, no two moments are the same.  Similar sometimes, but never the same.  

Springtime moments usually come when I am trout fishing or hunting turkeys.  I may be slinging a big gobbler over my back and looking to the top of a ridge where a pair of red-tailed hawks circle and scream above their nest high on the craggy limestone.  The moment might hit me as I find a patch of morel mushrooms among the fresh, new growth under a dying elm tree.  It may come as I talk with a farmer about the weather on a bright, sunny day, and watch as  week-old calfs scamper around the field like schoolchildren.  I might be wading in a cold trout stream, casting a fly to trout which rise and feed on a hatch of the first caddisflies of the year.  Whatever the specifics of the moment may be, they all share a common thread - Spring shows us the freshness and optimism of new light, new growth and new life.

Summer moments are often simpler scenes, when the bustle and excitement of the season slows down and nature describes the season for me in one brief look.  I’m driving down a very long, very straight country road in my old truck, and come to a halt at a stop sign.  A hot breeze blows across huge fields of wildflowers and prairie grass on either side of me, the fields seemingly reaching to the horizons.  Large, fluffy seed puffs float above the fields, across the road and through my truck’s open windows.  Summer may also show me it’s moment as I sit by a dying campfire at midnight in the north woods.  The chorus of frogs is mesmerizing, and this moment is only broken by the loud hoot of a great-horned owl just outside the glow of the fire.  I might be casting a popper around the lily pads with a light flyrod, pulling out scrappy pumpkinseed sunfish one after another.  It may also be a bright, calm morning where a doe and spotted fawn come down to the lakeshore to wade out and munch on lily pads.  Summer moments revolve around the bounty of the season, when life is good for all living things and there is enough daylight to allow all of us a chance to pause and enjoy it.

Autumn finds me in the woods and on the sloughs most of the time, toting my shotgun and seeking various game.  Because of this, I see a lot of beautiful moments on my wanderings.  Autumn is a season that changes character many times - the early weeks bringing colorful reds and golds in the treetops, then a few weeks where all that remain are the golds in the poplars, and finally the treetops are bare and cold winds blow.  The season’s defining moment may come as I walk along a logging trail with my dog, on the lookout for grouse.  The road travels through a stand of mature poplars, and sunlight shines through brilliant golden treetops to the forest floor where the same golden leaves carpet the earth.  I may be sitting on the riverbank, my feet dangling in the current as colorful leaves flow downstream toward Lake Superior.  I have just released a bright silver steelhead trout, and take a deserved break to enjoy the moment.  Most often, though, Autumn’s defining moment comes to me when I am on a duck slough.  It may be the whistling of unseen wings in the still pre-dawn air as I sit in my blind.  As I sneak around the edge of a marsh, a pair of wood ducks jump out of the cattails and  hang motionless in the air for just a moment.  The beauty of these birds against the crisp bluebird sky and golden treetops is etched into my memory.  There are also melancholy moments when I sit through a long, cold morning late in the season and watch my floating decoys stop bobbing as the slough becomes locked in ice.  I manage to collect only one small diving duck, then pick up my decoys and paddle the canoe toward the portage trail, breaking through ice the whole way.  As the nose of my canoe bumps into a log at the portage take-out, four blackducks take off from a hidden pothole to my right, and I have no shot.  I watch them fly off into the first snowfall of the year, then look at the lone duck lying on the bow of my canoe and realize that Autumn is over.

Winter starts once the lakes freeze solid and the deer are butchered.  Snow piles up, everything is fresh and clean, and I am excited for the coming season.  Many folks dread the coming of a Minnesota Winter, but I enjoy the crisp air and cold temperatures.  A memorable moment from Winter comes as I drag my sled back across the frozen surface of a northwoods lake after an evening’s fishing.  In the crisp Winter air, more stars than I have ever seen blaze in the sky above me.  Aurora borealis dance in the sky on a cold winter night in the boundary waters as a pot of chili cooks inside our tent and we wait for a burbot to find our baits.  I may also find the moment as I trudge through deep snow along a cranberry bog, following the tracks of a fisher or bobcat that traveled this way the night before.  Simple moments also shine through, like when I return to the cabin to kick off my frozen boots and enjoy a cup of strong coffee next to the old woodstove.

I don’t know how folks interpret our wonderful changing seasons within the glum of the city.   Most people probably measure the season by the coming of various holidays or sporting events, things that man has created to break up the year.  Even our calendars lie about the seasons, telling me it’s not Summer yet even though the sulphurs are hatching and on a 90 degree day  I’m catching bass on a rubber frog.  The lake is frozen for a month and folks are driving out to walleye hotspots before the calendar says it’s winter.  It’s all relative, however, and each person should enjoy the season in whatever way makes them most happy.  As of this day, Autumn is winding down and I look forward to an Winter full of memorable moments.  Whatever one stands out and defines the season when I look back, I will stockpile it in memory and cherish it because it may be the last moment I will find, and God knows I will savor it for an eternity.