Usually I enjoy the marathon of newsletter writing on Saturdays, but not this weekend.

The clues came early. I’d sketched out a topic that seemed suitable to the day and time, but however much it coaxed me on I wasn’t feeling the thrill of the starting line or the promising place where the race might end.

It was like my energy had gone into hiding–and was calling on me to join it. 

There could be a dozen reasons, and I might as well begin and end with the environmental ones. Yesterday was another, in a succession of days, that felt askew.

Like the temperatures, either outside or inside. Over the past two weeks, we’ve had days here that hit 79 or 80 degrees, and others teasing 32.  

For the first weeks of November, swings like that used to be unheard of and my body’s been struggling to catch up.  It’s unsettling to feel in your bones either one step ahead or behind, but never quite landing.

Meanwhile at the U.N. Climate Conference (or COP29), the attendees were being hectored for their inability to move beyond proclamations and towards deliverables. “You’re caught between here and there as a more populist world loses interest. Reclaim the attention out there!”

But pictures (like the one above) were already reminding us that Mother Nature has usually dumped some of her trademark snow on the top of Mt. Fuji by this time of year.

Anyone who’s affected by the weather can see that she’s increasingly out of sorts.

And if I’d been looking for more signs that Nature’s rhythms had grown unnatural, other messengers have been wandering into my side and front yards, carrying their portents. 

_{The side-yard tulip, chestnut and ginkgo trunks, framed by the morning light and beckoning visitors.}

A few days ago when I was moving fallen leaves from porch to compost pile, I surprised a young antlered buck who’d been huddling with a doe in the side-yard’s shadows, causing them to leap past me in an explosion of muscle and irritation for what they must have believed was the relative safety of the autobahn out front–another reminder of how cheek by jowl we are between Fairmount Park and the rest of Philadelphia.

After their flash I couldn’t find where they’d gone, but when I was out with Wally the following day we were startled by the same buck, who’d decided to cross in front of the house a few yards from where we were standing. It’s always strange and marvellous how a creature so large can materialize out of nowhere on his cat-like feet.

On reflex, I ordered him to “Go back where it’s safer” before noticing that he’d also lost one of his antlers since we’d met the day before.  

A buck’s antlers typically drop in late winter, after their rut, growing back bigger and showy-er in the following year.  

That’s when I realized that even his “shedding”—if that’s what it was—wasn’t happening when it was supposed to, and that he too might have lost his bearings and broken off a key part of himself before he’d ever had the chance to joust.

Again it seemed: this is not how it’s supposed to be at this time of year. 

_{What’s called “a spike on one side buck,” usually spotted in February or March.}

Trying to not be affected by the drumbeat of geo- and national-politics—with so much more of it to come—also leaves one feeling unmoored or drained or hungover after too many slugs. Maybe this is just the dip before one administration really collides with another. 

But even from Forced Stop I’m hearing that the American Weather Service has issued a region-wide fire warning because there’s been virtually no rain here since July.

The high atmospheric pressure has literally been sucking what moisture remains on the ground, in my eyes and body, up into the sky. I can’t even hold my water without noticing. 

Maybe the message continues when a new Dune saga starts streaming this weekend, those stories about a planet whose inhabitants recycle all of their moisture so it doesn’t get taken down by the desert, leaving only husks. 

Maybe it’s natural to be in conservation mode about water and energy and weathering, to marshal resources while you can.

This post was adapted from my November 17, 2024 newsletter. Newsletters are delivered to subscribers’ in-boxes every Sunday morning, and sometimes I post the content from one of them here in lightly edited form. You can subscribe by leaving your email address in the column to the right.