[Survey] Atlas' Transmission

Helloooo, ARC survey team! My name is Atlas, and I’m personally extremely excited for “spring” - or in my case, fall!

The planet that I live on has an opposite seasonal calendar to what’s considered the default. That means we get cold winters when most people are having summers, and spring begins when other folk are experiencing fall! I personally really love my planet, so I always get excited for the seasonal change - even if it makes celebrating holidays a little tricky with my penpal friends!

Fall brings all sorts of exciting new things, though, and something I can always connect to with my friends on other worlds is that the harvest season is starting for the both of us! Most planets really start growing things during the spring, since that’s when the snow has melted, and crops can grow again - but my planet focuses way more on autumn produce, like squashes and corn!

I’m really looking forward to our local harvest festival especially - every year we host it, and we figure out who’s grown the biggest gourd, and the most colorful corn cob! This year, I’m hoping to grow some really colorful corn - our planet is rich in nutrients that can affect the coloration, and I’m going to try a few new techniques to see if I can get a full rainbow on one cob! I’m not sure if it’ll work, but it’s definitely going to be fun to try.

I do know some friends who are trying for the largest gourd, though - that competition is a little bit tougher. Most competitors have been trying different fertilizer combinations, particularly with fertilizer obtained off-planet, and that can combine really extravagantly with our planet’s native flora! Last year, the winning gourd was practically as big as I was - and I’ve heard that this year’s entries might even be double that size! I don’t think I can even imagine it…

And lastly, I can’t mention fall without mentioning a scarier season! My planet doesn’t have any kind of official holiday revolving around hauntings and kooky monsters, but we do like to take influence from some residents who’re from other planets with their own holidays - it’s wonderful to share the culture together!

I used to be really scared of the celebrations of fear & the dead when I was a kid, but that’s because I didn’t entirely understand them back then. It’s not about scaring others or thinking too hard about death - it’s about celebrating the cycle of life & death, and of course, learning to enjoy and interact with what scares us - it helps to make those things a little less scary!

All in all, I’m looking forward to quite a bit this new season - and I’m also hoping that everyone who’s experiencing spring instead has a great time, too! Hopefully we all can share our stories from all our different seasons once it’s spring for me and fall for most others! Maybe we’ll all even inspire some new traditions for each other… I’m getting excited just thinking about it!