Seasons reveal a living nature that defies our efforts at control

By David McElroy · September 22, 2026

As I locked the door of my office to drive home Monday, the parking lot was deserted and quiet. It was only 7 p.m., but the last light of sunset was almost completely gone.

Something in the air felt different tonight.

It was getting dark a little bit earlier. I noticed flashes of lightning in the distance. And then it hit me. There’s always a moment in the early autumn when the air feels different and I know change is almost here.

Autumn is coming. It’s not here yet, but it’s coming. I feel it.

For years, this annual moment has been evidence that nature’s wheel is still turning, just as it always has. The wheel has oriented us for months to the growth and the green of summer and it’s about to push us to the beautiful harvest time — a time of reds and golds and browns — that comes just before nature goes dormant until time for another rebirth.

This almost imperceptible feeling in the air always gives me comfort. It reassures me that everything that’s happened for many millennia before I was born is still happening.

As I’ve gotten older, it’s also felt like evidence that nature is marking off another year for me — claiming just a bit more of the life I was granted when I was born many years ago.

Nothing about this felt frightening. Everything felt normal. Everything was as it should be. I was where I should be. Something much larger than me was in control.

Despite all of man’s efforts to control nature — to control our environment — nature was still in control. The return of this feeling lets me know once again that the God of nature is still supreme.

We humans don’t like to acknowledge any rulers other than us.

As a species, we see ourselves at the top of the food chain. As nations or tribes or clans, we grasp for power over others. As individuals, most of us feel driven to control others. Even the few who aren’t trying to control others are often loathe to say, “I am subject to a power that is greater than I.”

For many centuries, humans have been wrestling with nature for control over our environment.

We built houses to get out of the rain and to hold off the worst of the cold. After the Industrial Age got here, we started building machines to give us more control. We figured out better ways to heat our homes in the cold months. Then we figured out how to refrigerate the air in the hot months of summer. It would have seemed like magic to those who had lived before.

We designed and built machines that helped us conquer distance. Our machines could whisk us from one place to another, whether the machines were cars or trains or airplanes. And inside each of these machines, we engineered a comfortable environment to keep the external forces of nature away.

In a hundred different ways, our machines have freed us from having to live with the discomforts that nature once routinely threw at us. It is an objectively good thing for the health and comfort and well-being of billions of people around this planet.

But it’s also objectively true that our machines have left us increasingly isolated from the natural ecosystem that we’re a part of. And we have lost something because of that.

For most of us, seasons are about nothing but weather now. My house is about the same temperature year-round. The same is true for my office. My home and my workplace — and my car — are perfectly controlled environments that protect me from having to face nature.

Fewer and fewer of us have anything to do with raising crops or nurturing food animals. Planting seasons and harvest seasons are just quaint memories of what other people used to do. Those are things for specialists today who are mostly far away from us.

If we could, we would probably engineer life to be perfect all the time. What would our perfect temperature be? Maybe 75 degrees Fahrenheit? Or 80? 85? Let’s vote on it.

And rain? Who needs that. It’s always bright sunshine and clear skies inside our weather domes. (Remember the serious proposals for those?) Some even want to bring down reflected sunlight to illuminate the nights — so night becomes just like the day.

Without realizing it, we have bought into the notion that nature can be controlled — should be controlled — and that our comfort and convenience matter most.

I don’t want to give up our nice houses. I don’t want to lose heat or air conditioning. I don’t want to lose any of these comforts that have made our lives objectively better.

But on an evening when I’ve smelled the upcoming turn of another autumn, I’m reminded of what we’ve lost by losing touch with our physical environments. For the first time in my life, I’m feeling vaguely that I’ve lost something by not being in touch with the land and the seasons and the cycles that my ancestors were once so familiar with.

But here’s what I also see.

Nature is still there. Even when we try to shut it out, it’s still in control. It still operates just as it always has. It still whispers truths about creation and about life — and about death.

I don’t pretend to know how to balance my need for comfort with my need to be in touch with nature. I don’t pretend that I’m going to give up the comforts of modern life.

But I also know I’ve lost something by not being in touch with the land on which I live and not paying more attention to nature’s cycles.

To every thing there is a season — and a time for every purpose under heaven.

That’s true for the land. For the weather. For humanity itself.

It’s true for me. And for you. Nature gave us birth and nature will reclaim us one day. And this is good news, not something to be feared.

Share on Social Networks

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

It hasn’t happened yet, but there’s a possibility that I might be taking in a fourth feline. A couple of months ago, a cat-loving neighbor asked whether I’d seen a “tuxedo cat” hanging out in the neighborhood. I hadn’t, but this guy eventually wandered past my house a few weeks later — and we haven’t been able to find evidence that he has a home. I’ve been giving him water and food for the last week and he finally let me pet him two nights ago. He’s purred for me two nights in a row and he let me take a low-quality selfie with him Thursday night. Tonight, though, he let me pick him up and bring him inside to look around. This went surprisingly well, as you can see from this photo. I don’t know whether he’ll be joining the family, but I’m certain that Alex, Oliver and Sam would vote no, at least until they get to know him. I’m trying to make certain he doesn’t have a home, but if he does join us, what do you suppose his name will be?

It turns out that the radical far left has been training “Antifa cats” to sabotage anything important to Donald Trump. Everything he did was perfect. Honest. It was all the cats’ fault. Arrest all the cats! This is the latest of my ridiculous satirical shorts. Please go watch it. Then “like” it and subscribe. Please. I’m begging you. (Too much?) Although a couple of the previous videos have had views in the hundreds, most have still been seen by fewer than 20 people. So I seem to be having trouble letting people know that page exists.

Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

Related Posts