I count the Ioma’s year in sensations, not dates. Early spring starts when the mist thins just enough to see the vents exhale, frogs call through snowbanks, and the first migratory birds circle a slough that never froze. By late spring the melt roars, nutrient-rich water floods every hollow, and the air hums with the first midge hatch while predators den up with newborn litters. Every phase maps back to the thermal pulse charted in Mist-Engine Weather and even shows up as seasonal markers on the atlas.

Summer doesn’t arrive gently; it erupts. Thermal meadows blaze with flowers, fish stack in warm shallows to spawn, and the sky fills with birds feeding around the clock in unbroken daylight. That frenzy fuels the autumn to come, when berries ripen, elk rut in the fog, and every creature, human or otherwise, turns frantic with storing, smoking, and drying whatever they can before the cold snaps back.

Autumn slides into winter on a tide of returning mist. Visibility drops to arm’s length, migrants lift away in waves, and the remaining animals tighten their ranges around reliable heat. Winter proper is a negotiation between darkness and endurance: we fish through steam-veiled leads, track wolves by ear more than sight, and ration the preserved caches we laid down months earlier.

By late winter, hunger sharpens every decision. Wolves test weakened elk, humans lean on bone grease and smoked fish, and the fog feels heavy enough to press on the lungs. Still, the rift always hints at renewal, warm soil, a trickle of water, a bird call in the gloom, reminding me that the next thaw is already brewing beneath the crust. Those rituals of preparation, from preserved caches to communal hunts, spill directly into the practices I detail in Crafting Survival in the Mist and Culture Woven from Mist.