Let the Season Season You

The season has its own wisdoms.

Here on the North Coast of California, autumn is beginning to gather us inward. I feel the tug with a little more force today as temperatures drop and the rain shifts from last week’s gentle invitation to today’s colder, more insistent arrival. Last week’s autumn altar creation was one threshold, but the woodstove is whispering for me to dust it off and build a heart(h)fire in her chest, inaugurating a ritual that will be with me for many months.

Each day, a darker color on the maple, a new surprise fruiting of mycelial exuberance in the form of fairy parachutes or russulas. The days tighten up, the sun offers its evening farewell at a different angle, casting fallglow through the trees. The forest floor deepens its great composting.

And yet, how often do we live as if the seasons were interchangeable? Moving through them without allowing them to move through us?

We carry our summer pace into autumn, our productivity demands into winter, our insistence on clarity into the great fertile unknown.

When do our bodies and dreams get their honoring pace?

What would it look like to let the season do some of the shaping? Not merely to observe its changes, as through a window, but to apprentice ourselves to its rhythms.

To slow when the world slows. To loosen our grip on what is ready to fall away. To give some of our unanswered questions the shelter of darkness.

After all, a forest floor this rich requires the composting of what came before.

Not every season asks us to blossom or maximize.

#Seasonmaxxing?

Some invite us to deepen our roots, compost the old stories, and listen for what is quietly stirring underground. Or, like Bear, straight up invest in rest.

The season has something to teach us that cannot be learned by rushing through it.

Can we let the season season us?

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LET THE SEASON SEASON YOU

Don’t jump over the season
like an escapee.

You may dream of spring
on the solstice

try for eternal vernal
at the first frost
but you can’t leap beyond the now.

Slow down
and let the season season you.

There is much that is not true
until darkness gets its due

yet, there is hope in truth
and dark’s your better ally
than unseasonal false friends.

So don’t jump over the season
like an escapee.

From what are you fleeing?

Can you flee from the season within you?

Don’t be tempted by the empty calories
of bittersweet fruit too easily procured—
an early ripening causing indigestion.

Let the season season you.

Let the cold crack that hard bark
of yours—open your meadow
to feel it all.

Open your earthbody and feel
even the best of it
as well as the worst of it—
where it hurts the most.

Oh how much life there is
in death!

Be still and let the season season you.

Let darkness fall in you
like a sword of truth
and you will find a deeper root
than you ever knew.

Then—at the ripening hour
your branches will know
how to celebrate the sky

your sun will be a true sun
the world is needing most.

Do you understand
these are the kindest words
you’ve yet heard?

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An invitation into the fruitful dark

This poem is from my collection Within the Cave Something Pulses, a companion to an intimate winter circle of the same name that I’m offering again beginning December 6.

Over six Sunday gatherings revolving around winter solstice, we’ll explore seasonal wisdom, shadow, dreams, inner composting. At the heart of the journey is a supported solo day on the land, followed by a Council of Return for storytelling and witnessing.

If you’re feeling called to slow down, go inward, and listen for what the darkness knows, I’d love to have you join us.