time, and the beginning of harvest

TIME, AND THE BEGINNING OF HARVEST
Time seems to be passing in a very unusual way right now. I went to Laos by bus to get a new visa, about a four or five day trip altogether, and when I came back everything was very different. For one thing, it hadn’t rained but a tiny bit, so the ground was hard again like baked clay, and getting a shovel to go through was difficult. Also, people are going around in coats, sweaters, and stocking caps! “It’s the start of winter,” someone told me, not understanding at all why I might find the statement funny. There’s definitely a turn in the weather, and even I happily put on a long sleeved shirt the other night, but “winter”. No.
But the biggest changes are in the rice fields. It seems like such a short time ago, maybe about three weeks, maybe four, and I was walking in the back fields of the Yindichati farm and I was so surprised to see that some of the rice was starting to seed. And then about ten days later the color of almost all the fields changed in a dramatic way, from mid-summer, mid-rainy season intense grassy green to a tinge of yellow. It may not sound like a lot, but when the landscape’s flat and rice grows in all directions, a change in the color of the land vis a vis the sky is a very big change. The color of the sky looks different, set against a plain of greenish-yellow. And it all seemed to happen in just a couple of days.
Now, back from Laos, the harvest is already five or six days in. The villages are quiet and feel almost abandoned because everyone is working early morning till dark with sickles in the fields. One of the few signs of life is the yellow of the harvested rice set out on the paved roads to dry in the sun, and people with long wooden rakes raking the rice back and forth so that all the rice gets uniformly dried.
Harvest, I think, has come early this year. Last year I was here for harvest and it was a good three weeks into November, not the beginning of November, like it is now. People are happy because the rain has stopped - making it possible for harvest to happen - and the harvest is a good one. Pa’s leg seems to be holding up fine so far, and Mae’s back hurts (like everyone’s back). It’s a very no nonsense time of the year. There’s not a question about what everyone does each day, and harvest will continue for another three to four weeks. It’s a stunning amount of labor. Each day in Mae and Pa’s fields there are anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five people working, relatives and close neighbours (some people at seventy years old). There’s no way harvest can happen here without extended family.
Since going to Laos I’ve been working (writing), so I haven’t spent any time in the fields, though I want to. But the days have felt really weird. I’ll think that it’s one in the afternoon and then I’ll look at a clock and it’ll be ten in the morning, or even nine-thirty. The time each day is passing incredibly slowly; days feel especially long, and yet the dramatic change in the fields is happening so rapidly. Also, I look down at my arms and my skin is dry – not desert dry – but dry! So I bought lotion, which seems like a very odd thing to do based upon the humidity of the last five months.
I guess I expected the change in seasons to happen slowly, but yet again I’m wrong.