Stick Season

Sitting by the window overlooking a swath of woods, my eyes scan the mostly bare trees, their branches a dark gray silhouetted against a light gray sky. It’s one of those gloomy November days when the sun’s been hiding since night faded into pale light, and color seems to have drained from the world.

True, many of the trees in our area are still full of vibrant-colored leaves. But from my seat, I see none of that. Just grays and browns, dead leaves on the ground lying beneath the trees from which they fell. This patch of woods offers an unmistakable foreshadowing of what will soon overtake the entire area.

Stick season.

I recall decades ago taking a photograph of bare tree branches against a gray Winter sky and remarking to myself, “There’s a melancholy beauty even in this.”

Melancholy indeed.

If it weren’t for stick season, Autumn would probably be my favorite season. But Autumn is so short, really. I mean, what really makes it pleasurable: warm days, cool nights, brilliant colors on display as the leaves change. The greens turn to shades of yellow or red or orange, and for a few days they trees dazzle us. Then comes one of those blustery storms from the northwest and strip the trees, leaving sticks behinds.

And then there’s the landscape.

The corn and bean fields, once full of life and shades of green, lie fallow. The farmers have tallied this year’s yield from their acreage, and only tan stubble remains, poking up from the brown earth. “Earth tones,” the color palate describes it, dominate the northwest Illinois landscape. Gone are the variegated greens of trees and grass and shrubs and even weeds. The reds and oranges and yellows and purples—and every other color imaginable—have yielded to earth tones.

Stick season declares, “Summer’s long gone; the harvest is ended.”

Those spindly branches sticking out against the gray sky are also a harbinger of what’s to come. They tell us to rummage through the closet and find the gloves, hat, boots, coat.

Check the supply of ice melt.

Be sure the snow shovel is easily accessible.

Change the furnace filter.

Winter’s right around the corner, so stick season tells us. And we best be ready, lest we be left in the cold.

The calendar divides the year into four distinct seasons, but experience tells us those distinctions aren’t so sharp. Winter hangs on and blasts us even after Spring flowers have sprung up. The thawing earth at Winter’s end has led some to dub those few weeks of March into April, “Mud Season.” When does Summer arrive, really? After Memorial Day, even though it may feel like Spring for another couple of weeks?

And Summer’s just as fickle. It fades after Labor Day as the days shorten and the late afternoon shadows lengthen. Autumn’s here…until an Indian Summer heat wave in late September or even early October. Autumn is all about apples and pumpkins and changing leaves. But come late November, all of that’s behind us. It’s still Autumn. No. It’s stick season.

Seasons change in a fuzzy sort of way.

Life, so they say, can be divided into various stages or seasons. But what season I’m in, actually, can be a bit fuzzy.

Later in life is supposed to be “Winter.” But when does Winter begin? There’s no “solstice” to measure it by, after all. I’m thinking those seasons are quite individualized.

My paternal grandfather died in his late 50s. When did he face stick season, warning him that Winter’s chill was right around the corner?

And what about his wife? She outlived him by about fifty years! She was in mid-Summer when her husband died; stick season was four decades in the future!

In a way, I suppose, we can’t really say for sure what season of life we’re in—well, unless we’re close to the century mark. Pretty safe to say we’re in late January at that point. But a young person in his 20s may be in December. A lady in her 60s may be in mid-Summer. And so on. Often, we simply don’t know. Then again, a major crisis may strike, and God gives us enough time to realize we’re well into Winter.

What a shock to come to stick season and realize you’re not ready for Winter!

The prophet Jeremiah was granted a vision by God that enabled him to see the looming Winter for his people. Their seasons of opportunity had been squandered, living for self, forsaking the worship of the living God of Israel, preferring instead gods of wood and stone. On the horizon appeared the Winter gales of divine chastening for Israel’s spiritual infidelity. There would be no rescue from the coming Babylonian forces; doom was certain.

Jeremiah hears the Lord who responds to the cry of His people:

Behold, the cry of the daughter of my people from the length and breadth of the land: “Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King not in her?”
“Why have they provoked me to anger with their carved images and with their foreign idols?”

Jeremiah 8:19, ESV

And this inevitable doom brought on by Israel’s idolatry leads to Jeremiah’s lament,

The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.

Jeremiah 8:20, ESV

How lamentable to come to stick season, when harvest is past and summer is ended, and see nothing but doom on the horizon. To realize, “I am not saved.”

It doesn’t have to be this way.

No matter the season of life, even an ardent idolater can be saved. Through a different prophet, Isaiah, the Lord God offered a challenge and an opportunity:

They have no knowledge who carry about their wooden idols, and keep on praying to a god that cannot save. Declare and present your case; let them take counsel together! Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the Lord? And there is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me. Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.

Isaiah 45:20–22, ESV

Whatever season of life we find ourselves, it’s critical that we turn to the Lord, the righteous God and Savior, and be saved!