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"Live each season as it passes; breathe air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each." Henry David Thoreau

Each year has its seasons in much the way a natural human life has stages of development. Spring is the season for birth and rebirth. Trees, bare branches braced against a wintry sky, sprout the buds of birth of their summer foliage. Crocus, the tulip, and the iris push through the warming soil, bringing a splash of color to the landscape. In the spring of our lives, we too are born. Like the new colt, wobbly on its new way, we learn about the world. We learn to function, how to talk, to walk. And as a child we are fully alive in the present moment. The intensity of a child at play is the "live each season" that Thoreau proclaims. Hence the child develops, "breathing the air, drinking the drink, tasting the fruit" and by turning a cardboard box into a castle, making an afternoon into a trip back in history. No one teaches the child this ability, much as the robin does not teach her baby birds to fly. There is a naturalness to "resign yourself to the influences of each", to be so involved that time is not a consideration or if it is, it seems to stop.

As spring turns to summer, the trees fill out, the farmer's crops grow in the fields, and for much of the animal world, what are babies one day, are young adults the next. Summer is the time of maturing where all nature grows up to fulfill its purpose, its raison d'tre. In the summer of our lives, it is time for us to mature. And so we move from spring toddlers to schoolboys and girls maturing in the summer sun into teenagers. The meaning of life in the natural world is to live, to reproduce, and therefore prepare for the next generation. We are not so different in that we participate in the natural world and are subject to its rules. There is a difference though, between us and the rest of creation. It is just that we don't think about it in the long days of daylight during summer. As the season closes, nature is at full maturity. The corn is ripe for harvest, oak trees rain down torrents of acorns, and all day long one can watch the squirrels busily working to gather the harvest for the winter ahead. These animals and plants in late summer are all about preparation. Preparation for their life in the days and months to come. Our schoolchildren prepare their lessons, thereby preparing their mind. Their play becomes organized and through their play, their bodies grow and

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