WoTD: vicissitude

Definition:

1. Regular change or succession from one thing to another; alternation; mutual succession; interchange.
2. Irregular change; revolution; mutation.
3. A change in condition or fortune; an instance of mutability in life or nature (especially successive alternation from one condition to another).

Nature's seasonal vicissitude wore Norm down. Sure, the four seasons offered a measure of diurnal predictability, scheduled long and short days and those in between where the sun, low down and lacking in heat, chased frost across the ground, but from year to year he endured torturous unpredictability. Three years ago, in spring no less, a howling sandstorm blew in from the west and scraped two inches of topsoil from every one of his paddocks. All his seed went with the wind. Five thousand dollars gone in just a few hours. Then the summer rains, regular for December, failed to arrive. December burned into January and still no rain. That was three years ago and the experts called it a climate change induced drought. Norm thought otherwise and hung on when other farmers gave up. He believed in cycles, in seasonal patterns, in the regular succession and order of things. The rain would come. It had to, and until it did, he would suck it up and endure. It's what Anderson men did.