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The loss of terms like “dogwood winter” is a casualty of urbanization.

I had never heard of dogwood winter or even noticed if a cold snap accompanied the blooming of dogwood trees outside my childhood home in Maryland.

In other words, our lives tend to be less linked to the rural ecosystem which the existence of “dogwood winter” depends on.

Still, “dogwood winter,” “mud season,” “gray Goldenrod,” and “purple coneflower” have much to say about where we come from—and where we might go in the “Anthropocene.”

A professor of mine—a photographer with a zoology degree—introduced me to the term “dogwood winter,” a brief cold snap that interrupts the warming spring weather.