Paul Nichols lives in Loudon.
Since the 1960s, I’ve loved to listen to Joni Mitchell’s song, “Urge for Going.” Over the years the song has been sung by New Hampshire folksinger Tom Rush, NYC’s Dave Van Ronk and many others, all great to listen to this time of year, especially by us in the Northeast. The lyrics are beautiful and so in sync with the natural features in these parts.
A glance across our little pond onto the meadow which graces the southern edge is so lush with greenery during the spring and summer months. Now it has turned richly brown with mature cattails and the lighter brown slumbering blue joint grass, with a few scatterings of alders. The mixed forest borders three extremities of the marsh, the hardwoods now pretty much skeleton-like, free of most leaves.
Joni’s lyrics melodically greet the season’s changes, from the frost gobbling the vivid hallmarks of summer as the sun slowly rises. She sees the meadow grass turning brown as winter closes in. The bully winds scatter fallen leaves as warrior winter moves in. Seasonal plants that thrive are dying while migrating birds are going south.
She creates a gorgeous picture through song and one that can easily be seen in everyday life. As all these changes inevitably advance, the urge for going builds to possibly find a lost lover. Joni’s lyrics are more beautiful than I can describe and the melody carries them perfectly.
The song has meaning close to home for other reasons too. As with other fall features, the brittle heirloom bean vines with dry pods well past shell bean stage are removed from the shocks, ready for flailing and winter storage. I used to think of moving south at this point. At least during the winter months. I had the urge for going.
That was then. Now with drastic climate change affecting life all across most areas of our country with adverse conditions, I have second thoughts about moving. Newscasts show 100-year floods and droughts, record-damaging hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and forest fires. Beachfront and island property is encroached by the angry surf, as protective dunes erode and wash into the sea. North of us is the constant loss of permafrost and drastic glacial melting.
Now I’m thinking that living in the Northeast I have the best that nature has to offer, even with the perils of climate change. I don’t yearn to travel afar to reconnect with my lover because she’s here with me.
With advanced age, winter feels colder than in my youthful days, the dark hours seem longer and body aches are magnified. But I know that spring will come, sugar maples will be tapped and mulch will be raked from October-planted garlic exposing healthy green shoots.
The most extreme tentacles of climate change haven’t reached us here, allowing comparatively high-quality living space. Now, I’ve grown into the urge for staying.