saison d’être
in one lifetime i’ve marked the passage of time in three markedly different ways: tunnel-visioned to the cadence of the academic year; suspended in a trance by the bay area’s monthly sameness; and, now, rousing to the cyclical weather patterns of the city i inhabit. it took one (1) whole pandemic to shake me out of the northern california neverland. yikes? yay?
i have recipe writer joshua mcfadden to thank for awakening my senses to seasonal change. though his cult classic cookbook six seasons: a new way with vegetables flubs in its uncalled-for feminization of food, it showed me each season’s bounty and how to shape my cooking to its contours. i’m a little ashamed to admit that i didn’t know to pick produce at its peak until i read it at the ripe old age of twenty-five.
alright, alright, i did not spend a quarter century completely cleaved from the alimentary response to seasonal change. i knew watermelon tasted sweetest in the summer, when i’d chomp on thick slabs of its reddest flesh until my stomach bloated. similarly, i noticed the sudden abundance of cranberry and pumpkin desserts at the fwinter feasts i shared with my family. these offhand observations played second fiddle to my self-interests: my loved ones, my schooling, my career, my overall life trajectory. i scoped the world to me, never thinking to situate myself in the broader interspecies society upon which i wrought my main-character syndrome.
i chew on this as i quite literally chew on my first hummus and tomato toast of the season. that i can taste tomatoes topping themselves from june to july to august is new as of this year. so is my infatuation with stone fruit. i didn’t give a shit about peaches, plums, or pluots as a kid, probably because a certain kafkes matriarch pulled a fast one on me by passing off cloying canned drupes as a “dessert.” fast forward to this weekend when i willingly (nay, downright lovingly!) arrayed apricots in concentric circles atop my first-ever fruit tart. (since when does this chocoholic seek out fruit in dessert?!)
i pinch and pick the plums fruiting in my backyard with the same precision i applied to problem sets and journal entries a decade ago. seasonal change is so much more compelling than i’d cared to notice.
it’s bittersweet that my late-blooming appreciation of in-season produce has dovetailed with the hockey-sticking climate crisis. i couldn’t stave off despair as last year’s wildfires subsumed my state of residence; i doubt i’ll fare better this fall. but sorrow is an individual response to a global problem, and, as my stunted seasonal inattention of yore suggests, blinders fetter us to a shallower way of being. i could stop at being sad, but the better, unfettered move is to, well, mobilize. i instead strive to become a steward of the land that yields my beloved plants.
i’m not sure what such grandiose ambition looks like at the scale of the quotidian, but i’m starting by volunteering at a local garden. other potential actions for me and anyone else who aches to give back to the land that grants us such delicacies include:
- keeping abreast of and donating to climate justice organizations;
- standing alongside san franciscan climate-concerned collectives, as well as those involved in other matters of urban life that interplay with climate wellness;
- educating myself on the centuries of colonizer man-versus-nature mentality that got us into this nightmare;
- and maybe more? do let me know what i’m missing!
as fire season looms, i’m going to do my damndest to protect that which i’ve learned late (but i hope not too late) to be precious.
