Autumn surprised me. Summer felt
like a long joyful celebration of life in many ways and I revelled in the openness that summer encourages. Fresh from the wild, I still
felt her warmth in my veins – her rhythmic pulsing of zest and extraversion.
I know I saw a few leaves touch the ground and fleetingly thought I needed to prepare
myself for season change but I somehow believed I had at least a month left to
play, to share in the expansiveness and dream. I didn't want to take notice of the signs.
And then Summer suddenly left, without a long goodbye. Overnight, trees started to dry up and crinkle around the edges. The air hinted at cooler
mornings, night started to visit a little earlier. Acorns fell to find new homes in the soil,
waiting for the squirrels to collect and store.
Internally, I felt panic. I wasn’t ready for the shed, to let go, and
change again. I felt discombobulated by seasonal change and the preparation for
fall. I wanted to cling as I still felt summer had so much more to give, I had so much more to
learn. Both the Aniwa Gathering and Into the Wild had taught me so much and there was still processing and integration occurring.
Yet the earth has its own timings, its wisdom, and continues to teach this slow student about change.
In university the students were arriving with stories to tell. When I walked in
the park on the way to work, I saw leaves that looked like static fireworks. There
were families arriving in our home, presenting yielded crops for us to feast. There was the
greeting of dusk on my bike ride home. There was the end of another course that
had continued my link to my Shamanic birthright, as I finished the medicine wheel
in its shorter form.
So many endings and new beginnings.
And now as my calendar begins to fill for the semester ahead, I feel I am now surrendering and embodying autumn. I have started to turn within. I seek silence and the
whispers of the leaves as they gently detach and start their new phase of
nurturing the soil. As I pile the clothes on to my body, I feel
cocooned from the outside and can sense the foundations for future hibernation. I can feel the rise of the feminine arising in the Western hemisphere.
Aho.
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