2009 is winding down. Thursday, October 22 is the 295th day of the year. Only 70 days remain. Once again, our calendars are nearing the end of another year of anniversaries, birthdays, appointments, and days not to be forgotten. Where would we be without calendars to keep us on track? Though time itself is embedded in our genes, most of us are lost without watches, clocks, and calendars.

All living creatures have biological clocks. The reason for this is clear: all life evolved on a planet that rotates on its axis once a day. And if you don't believe you have a biological clock, fly to Moscow or do shift work and you'll soon be a believer.

I recall taking shop in high school under Mr. John Hawkins. One day he told us that if we saw a hawk flying over a field, the hawk would be there the next day at the same time. I didn't give that much thought until I worked as a cinematographer and a writer in the natural history area. Mr. Hawkins was right. All wild things move to the rhythms of life.

Wild creatures, in fact, possess an uncanny sense of time. Geese migrate at the same time each year. Leaves fall with the arrival of autumn, and bears hibernate during the winter. The natural world moves in harmony to life's rhythms but not man. Not us.

The modern world has suppressed most of whatever natural rhythms we have. Schedules, shifts, standard time versus daylight savings time, all these things override whatever inner sense of time we have. We make things complicated with our tide tables, airline schedules, and busy calendars. Where would we be without our wall calendars and fancy computer calendars?

At first glance, a calendar appears to be nothing more than a chart with a neat arrangement of months, weeks, days, and lunar cycles. But it's much more than that. It places the motions of the moon, Earth, and sun—revolving around each other in a solar orbit— in our hands. A calendar, quite simply, tracks time. And it lets us remember special days as well as when to work and when not to.

To those who preceded us eons ago the skies themselves were a great calendar, available to anyone with enough ability and persistence to keep records. For ancient people, understanding the stars literally meant the difference between life and death. Early men were in synch with the rhythms of the universe. There rhythms, were, perhaps, the only events they could depend on. The sun always rose. The moon went through its cycles and day and night came predictably. Knowing when to migrate to avoid cold weather ... knowing when to plant and harvest ... that was a tad tricky until human ingenuity solved these issues using little more than rocks.

The ancients erected giant monuments to mark the comings and goings of the sun, moon, and stars. A roofless temple in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico ... Stonehenge in England ... three upright slabs of rock in the American Southwest. Indians tracked the arrival and passage of summer by noting the sun's rays in relation to cairns, rock piles, placed in a great ring.

This cumulative knowledge was passed on and in time it helped create the first written calendar. That was more than 4,000 years ago. Pope Gregory XIII reformed the calendar. He cut the year 1582 by ten days and refined the idea of the leap year to bring the calendar more in line with Earth's rotation and seasons. Pope Gregory gave us the calendar we use today and a good one it is. The difference between it and the true solar year is reduced to less than one day in 3,000 years.

In the past, before cities arose, before the sky filled with haze and pollutants, the night sky must have been breathtaking. I imagine a group of ancient men standing upon the swell of a gentle plain. They turn their primitive faces to the sky. It's black as ink, the air clear. Above them shine thousands of stars, far-flung, galactic points of light forming shapes, the constellations.

Tonight the men are uneasy. The herds of wild animals upon which they depend for food and clothing have migrated to distant lands. But tonight the men understand why. Orion, The Hunter, has risen above the horizon. The stars tell the men that soon they must break camp and travel south. The bitter cold season will soon close in.

During the winter on cold nights when the air is more like chilled glass and stars shine with breathtaking brilliance, I find myself looking at the night sky. I see familiar constellations, the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper. I see the Milky Way, the edge of our own galaxy, and it pleases me in a way I cannot express. Still, I would be hard pressed to predict the seasons based on looking at the night sky alone. And, besides, I don't have to. I have three calendars in front of me this very moment.

Like me, I imagine you'd be lost without your calendars. We should never forget, though, that our roots run deep into a past where stone slabs, boulder etchings, and rings of rock piles directed our ancestors' efforts to survive on a wild planet.

Were it not for our civilized ways and the tradition of three meals a day, we'd eat and sleep when we were hungry and tired; not because the clock says it's time to eat or sleep. Electricity turns our night into days and central heating turns winter into spring. No wonder we've lost our life rhythms.

There's a reason we say, "The early bird catches the worm." There's a rhythm to life as surely as the moon controls the tides. Wildflowers, butterflies, and waterfowl feel these rhythms and so did Mr. Hawkin's hawk.

Email Tom with feedback and ideas for new columns. tompol@ earthlink.net