Category: Seasonal Celebration
The Call to Pilgrimage
Last week the fall winds arrived. They came in a great gust on the equinox, turning the leaves upside down and silver. By nightfall the humidity of summer had dropped away, and the first truly cold evening of the season made the stars sharpen. Every year the winds of autumn usher in the same…
Dealing with Summertime Sadness
Summer has its own darkness. Thunderstorms, closed canopies, forests cast in shadow. Twilight woodlands where mushrooms bloom. For all its long hours of light, summer is a very literally dark time in my house. Built in the middle of a forested grove, every year my home becomes a deeply shaded cave during the summer…
Why it’s Okay to Feel Everything
As beautiful as spring is, it doesn’t arrive gently. The transition from late winter into early spring is one of seesawing extremes. Freezing nights and warm afternoons; buckets of rain and the hard snap of ice. Lately, the changing moodiness of early spring seems to match the ebb and swell within me. Like most…
Finding Light in Dark Times
In the thick of winter it’s easy to forget that the light is actually growing each day. A week from now we’ll have an hour more sunlight than last week— and in just over a month the days will officially be longer than the nights. Though the sun may be gaining strength, early February…
The End Before the Beginning
Marked by the longest nights of the year, the solstice season has always been defined by a profound pause. In Latin, the word “Solstice” translates as “sun stays still.” If you watch the sunrise on the days around the Solstice, it appears as if the sun is halted in one place on the horizon….
Small Celebrations Matter
Last week we had our first snow of the year. A dazzling down that blanketed the land in white, it felt like a hug from the sky. After an unusually quiet Thanksgiving— and the news that Christmas would be similarly spent— the coziness of the snow felt like a gift. With the roads impassable…
The Best Way To Honor Your Ancestors
I always seem to have big things happen in autumn. Job changes, new relationships, the passing of loved ones, windfalls, leases and losses. I used to think it was just random— but now I know that the constellation of your life simply becomes more malleable this time of the year. In part, because the most…
A Beginner’s Guide to Water Magic
The oldest magic on Earth never died. It’s still flowing down the hillsides, literally falling from the sky. Before humans worked with plants or stones, the first source of medicine was water. Across my ancestral lands— the British Isles and European continent— some of the oldest sites of worship are springs, uprisings from the Earth…
