Seasonal ebbs and flows
It struck me while I was out in the woods yesterday that seasonal changes are a bit like the ocean’s tides.
There’s a period of relative stability and stillness – summer and winter, high and low tide. And then there’s a period of rapid, noticeable change – spring and autumn, the flow and ebb tides.
Only after the forest bathing session I ran at Frodsham Woods did I connect this to how one participant’s noticings* had a lot to do with patterns of flow.
Nature does this, of course – repeats patterns on different scales and in different contexts. The branching patterns of trees mirroring the catchments of rivers mirroring the branching of bronchioles** in mammals’ lungs…
For the tides, it can seem like they are quite still for a couple of hours around high and low tide, then for a couple of hours between those points they rush in or fade away much more noticeably. A pattern of calm stillness and dynamic movement constantly shifting from one to the other.
Somewhere in the calm stillness of high tide and low tide, summer and winter, is the tipping point where the energy shifts from advance to withdrawal. These are the summer and winter solstices. A point of movement in these apparently still and stable times.
And somewhere in the ebb and flow, the changes of spring and autumn, is the point of balance, the halfway marker, the point when days and nights are exactly the same length. A point of stillness in these times of rapid change.
I’m really noticing the nights drawing in at the moment. The changeability of the weather. Leaves changing colour. Conkers and sweet chestnuts and sycamore helicopters falling to the ground. My chickens are moulting. The sparrows and dunnocks and blue tits in my garden are on a mission to fatten up.
I feel this change within myself too. A sense of urgency to get out and soak up any sunshine and warmth we now get. A sadness about entering the dark months and a longing for the kind of cosy fireside community that our ancestors would have turned to in the winter – a time of music and storytelling and conserving energy.
My mind is looking ahead to what I’ll plant in the garden next year and trying to avoid the mistakes of this year (inadequately supported tomatoes collapsing, again; repeat sowings of lettuce all getting destroyed by escaping chickens who are really highly destructive miniature dinosaurs). I’m reading about herbal medicine and getting excited about growing more herbs.
Equally in professional life – what needs to be rethought, what do I want to offer to people next year, am I on track with my values and sense of purpose?
I wonder how I can find stillness and balance too, as well as these urges to shift and reassess and look forwards. How I can be present now and not caught up in an imaginary future.
I know the answer, even though I don’t always heed it:
Go outside.
Slow down.
Notice things.
It is very simple and so very hard to remember to do, or to find time to do, or to motivate myself to do when caught up in the busy-ness and concerns of the everyday human world.
*Spellcheck insists ‘noticings’ isn’t a real word. I thought about changing it to observations, but ‘noticings’ feels a better fit for what we do when we wander slowly and gently in nature and allow our surroundings to speak to us.
**I just went down a lung physiology rabbit hole. I had thought the word was ‘alveoli’ but apparently these are the small air sacs at the end of the bronchioles where gas exchange takes place. I also had to check that all mammals have bronchioles (and discovered that reptiles and birds kinda do too)… (welcome to my brain).