Jennifer Frick-Ruppert is the author of “Mountain Nature: A Seasonal Natural History of the Southern Appalachians” and a professor of biology and environmental science at Brevard College in western North Carolina.

I am glad to be alive. Really. To be able to walk outdoors into the heat of summer or the cold of winter and feel the air as if it, too, is a living thing. The cold pinch of frost and sharp tang when I breathe the icy air through my nose; the languid, limp, damp feel of a summer afternoon just before a thunderstorm when the air is almost thick enough to drink. To see the golden hues of fall, when whole coves resonate with color until the air itself takes on the tones of a glass of chardonnay. And spring, when the mornings are cool enough for a jacket, the grass shines with dewdrops that sometimes are frosty white, but by afternoon the heat of summer feels just around the corner. These are some of the joys of being in the southern Appalachians, and they change with the seasons.