Rebecca and I have just returned to St. Louis from 15 days in Scotland and 13 in England. Today we’ll drive to our home in northeast Iowa.

Yesterday, when we boarded Air Canada at 8:30 AM at Heathrow Airport in London, it was 60°F, and when we landed at 2:30 PM in St. Louis, it was 88°. After driving six hours north, when we pull into our Decorah driveway later this afternoon, it will be 60 ° again.

So, temperature-wise, over the past day, we’ve gone from fall to summer and back to fall.

When I suggested the favorite season prompt to Adrienne Beaumont during the August heat of the Global North, I had in mind that September represents a transition month for everyone in the world, with significant weather changes beginning that last roughly a quarter of the year.

In most areas around the world, the leaves change color and fall off, precipitation shifts, and temperatures modulate. After a changeover, a period of continuity sets in. This, in opposition to the previous season, prepares us for the next cycle.

So even if we don’t leave our homes, nature builds variety into our lives. And, in a bit of a paradox, reminds us of the continuity of change.

A lesson reinforced when we travel.

Especially to Scotland.

I took the first photo on day eight of our trip to Scotland, wanting to capture the clouds parting and the sun’s presence. I knew that if the sun had really disappeared, that story would have knocked Donald Trump’s shenanigans to the below-the-fold headlines of the front page of the New York Times.

For the first week, spent in the Highlands and on the Inner Hebrides islands, the sky took on this ominous beauty. You’ll have to be content with the picture, which is likely worth more than even a poet’s words.

A week later, on the eastern side of this beautiful country, over the Cairngorms National Park, the cloud blanket brightened and lightened, but still did its water-distribution job, soaking everything inside my waterproof backpack.

I wrote about our experience getting lost in this vast expanse, where we walked fourteen miles, took 31,000 steps, and spent over six hours confusedly reading maps and taking wrong turns.

And, to the point of this story, encountered what seemed to us like each of the four seasons. When the sun peeped through, we shed both our rain and fleece-lined jackets. For an hour or so, the wind peaked, and I pulled out my backpack gloves and stocking cap as my 77-year-old Raynaud’s syndrome hands were turning blue.

During the schmirr periods of rainfall, a light mist, I was reminded of walking through Palisade Park in the early spring in the American Midwest. But when the rain got heavier, both jackets were needed, and our back-home October fall chill was in the air.

If you’re around my age, you’ve accommodated to the continuities and changes taught by a long life.

These lessons are a gift of old age. We’ve learned well what nature, through seasonal changes, relentlessly teaches us.

Scotland, however, is the perfect short course, the Cliff Notes version of The Four Seasons.

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