Bill Felker has been keeping seasonal nature notes from Yellow Springs, Ohio since 1984. This category collects his core writing — close, patient observations of what is happening in the natural world as the seasons move from winter through spring, summer and autumn and back again.
Each entry reflects Bill’s lifelong practice of paying attention to the small signals that mark the passage of time in the landscape: the first hepaticas pushing through leaf litter in February, the exact week the wood thrushes arrive in May, the morning in late August when the quality of light shifts and something in the air announces that summer is ending.
“These are not dramatic observations. They are quiet, accumulated, and deeply rooted in a single place observed over four decades.”
Readers who follow the Seasonal Notes find that Bill’s writing teaches a new way of moving through the year — not by the calendar on the wall, but by the calendar written in the fields and woodlands outside the door.
Whether you are a longtime reader of Poor Will’s Almanack or discovering Bill’s writing for the first time, the Seasonal Notes offer an entry point into a practice of attention that can change the way you experience every day of the year.
Time in Place It is always late September when I make my trip into Kentucky to meditate for a few days at Gethsemani monastery. Since I never see the monastery at any other time of year, my trip takes me out of the circular context of the world of Yellow Springs in which I normally…
I woke at four this morning to katydids chanting, and took inventory of the external world through the day — dogbane pods reddening, wood nettle holding late, buckeye leaves browning, herons circling above hollow fog.
Today, I am watching butterflies without an ulterior motive — done with trying to identify and count them, giving in to the confusion of their names and markings. A short essay on letting go of the need to explain what nature is doing.
Bill Felker traces the origins of Poor Will’s Almanack — from a barometer gifted in 1972 to a lifelong practice of phenology, weather watching, and nature writing in Yellow Springs, Ohio.