A lot of my friends here at Pomona are from far-off places. Here in Southern California they often remark (complain?) that we don’t “have seasons”. As a Los Angeles native I am here, armed with camera in hand, to prove that we do, in fact, have seasons. As some may have been surprised to find, Claremont is not sunny and warm all the time. Now, I concede that our seasons are not exactly the same as seasons in other places. I like to think of it as summer on the one hand, rainy season/winter on the other, and then “spring” and “fall” as the times between the two when winter and summer are battling it out. Hence, in any given November or March we could get a week of 80-degree weather and then a week of gray skies and rain. The main difference for me between times that are summer and times that are not summer is less the temperature during the day than how cold it gets at night (during the summer it doesn’t really ever get cold at night).
That being said, I contend that the traditional four seasons that we are taught are not representative of a variety of climates in the U.S., let alone across the planet. I’m thinking here of the picture from preschool with the four quadrants that each had a tree: green and bushy for summer, golden red leaves in fall, barren and covered in snow for winter, and full of blooming flowers in spring. This is not a seasonal reality for many parts of the world, let alone many trees. In short, dare I say it, I think we are a bit seasonist. Combine this with my experience in South Africa, where seasons correspond with the opposite months in the year from what they are here (i.e., when I arrived in January it was midsummer and we all got major sunburns) and it really goes to show that our idea of seasons is skewed towards a very particular climate. I’m not sure where that even comes from—the Northeast?
Okay. Now for the pictures of pretty trees. In order to prove that our fall does look somewhat stereotypically fall-like (it’s still fall!), I went out across the campuses in search of trees with leaves that are changing color—not just falling off dead, which is what happens pretty much all summer for some trees. Two major conclusions from this process: 1) There are lots of beautiful red and orange and yellow trees this time of year, if you know where to look, hidden amongst those trees that should not go unappreciated just because they remain green. 2) Pomona has a really funky mix of foliage. I mean, check out the range of pine trees to palm trees we’ve got going on!
