Next week we will cross from autumn into earliest winter. The darkening nights enfold me and I am grateful for the cool kiss of air that greets me when I wake. The call to deeper rest is not only during the earlier arrival of evenings, but in the low hanging sun in day-sky.
Autumn Newsletter: Harvesting Rest
In recent years, my local climate has not followed the usual patterns of weaving cool weather into night, to leaves surrendering their green into startling reds and yellows, and flowers dropping to mulch into soil as autumn approaches. Oh, it arrives in some form, but a bit chagrined and with a folder full of explanations. So I was happy, yes happy, to don my rain gear as the calendar officially announced the equinox in my beloved Pacific NW and the Nature that surrounds me magically turned on cue. As one who has lived all but the first four years of her life in this region of the world, the shift in seasons is one way I navigate the spiral of my being. The harvest of rest this season offers, with its lengthening nights and bundling of my body for warmth, reminds me of all the moments I’ve forgotten in the chaos of summer about SLOW TIME. Slow time, something I lean into with more grace as I age. Stepping away from the demands of external clocks (though they still seems to dictate more of my life than I desire.)
Weaving Grief Into Our Enchanted Lives
Do you suppose small birds mourn? That, as their wee ones start out as four bodies emerging wet from beige, palest turquoise, and brown speckled eggs, one mouth seeming to crave life from the get-go while the others curl around the deep hearth of nest, waiting to stretch toward light, their parents ready to feed, to nurture, do they begin instinctual hoping? Do you wonder if, as the nest dwindles to one, they search for the lost or keep a keener eye on the ever-open mouth of the one remaining? Do they take time to sing a lament from the bow of the fir for the ones that never flew? And when, one morning after a night of tending, warming, they return for first feed to discover the one gone, no mouth to fill, too soon to fledge, do they weep bird tears? Do they rend their feathers? I wonder. I wonder.
Early Summer Newsletter: In Community With Birds
I guess this ”Early Summer” newsletter is substituting for the never-written-but often-contemplated “Spring” newsletter. It was an odd spring, what with a very wet start, a mid-season hot spell that dissipated into an almost autumnal feel. Oh, we had the occasional mid-80’s day and the tulips, lilacs, irises, peonies, dogwoods, and other seasonal regulars bloomed in color-wheel splendor to remind us Pacific Northwesterners that, yes, the calendar was correct. It was April. May. June. Somehow the writing of the Spring newsletter was waylaid by the enchantment of greening landscapes, creating and fine tuning my recent presentation, and pondering (okay obsessing about) my future “home” options…an ongoing journey I will not delve into right now.
Grief Never Fails Me
Spring finally arrived and it has been so dang frenetic and my still winter-paced body has been in overwhelm. The season was a good three weeks later than last year, as evidenced by my camera roll, with cool mornings and cold rains and lots of mud lingering well past the “April Showers” phase. The greens, as if suddenly alert to the change, are verdant, vivacious, vivid, and a full thesaurus of vibrant adjectives. Then there are the blossoms, the birds and all the wildness of this burgeoning season in full glory. It is so alive. And it isn’t that I don’t appreciate walking in the sunrise light and not having headlight-glare driving in the early evening hours. But, as I noted recently to a friend, as this season of flowing is upon us, I have felt more like ebbing. Finding stillness in the eruption of Spring energy can be challenging. Perhaps I should contact my Aussie friends and go to the Southern Hemisphere for a few months. A recent unseasonable heatwave has compounded the urgency in the air as if proclaiming “Summer is already here!” I haven’t even come on board with Spring. Sigh.
