Knowing Where We Are; Story of the Seasons

Spring Moving into Summer

Our deepest most resonant myths and stories come from the land. Meaning they come from our mammalian experience of day to day living in a physical ecology, and from our travels through time in that changing landscape. The passing days and seasons are the narrator of our story in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, driving the plot forward. And I imagine even in places where the weather changes very little from month to month, the flowering plants still all have their cycles, so they would come to define time and the story of the people there.

You’ve heard the axiom, “to all things there is a season...” but its meaning is only vaguely implied and may seem like just an abstract principle. Yet it could not be more specific, and like gold its meaning is untouched by the passage of time. Nothing could be more important to know than what season you’re in, in your life or when you’re living on the land. Without it we don’t know when to plant or when to harvest. It is our story line, our map of time, and without knowing the story we are cast adrift in an endless tumbling sea of possibility and dreadful realities.

I’ve been honouring the four Manitous (spirits of the directions) for forty some years and their teachings are still coming to me and helping me so I thought I would pass this on for this time of year. Every spring (which technically starts March 21) the fast-hold of the northern manitou, that has frozen everything into dark disembodied dreams of winter, breaks. The sap begins to flow back into the Maples and the creeks start to flow again even before the snow’s gone. By May, life has fully flowed back into the land and She in Her myriad of forms has awakened. Like blood flowing back into a blanched face, the land flushes green once again with life. And all possibilities, all potentials swell and open like flowers, in hope of being confirmed. And in doing so form the seeds to be born again into this reality perpetuating the cycle of life and fertility. On the land here every flowering plant holds the potential of creating a fruit to perpetuate itself into the future of this reality. Our first fruit, Wild Strawberries embody the maturation of this innocent ambition and its purity. This is why they are used medicinally for the heart and blood and ceremonially to cleanse and replenish. At this time of year our hearts should feel full, juicy and sweet like the strawberry. Filled like the rest of creation with joy, filled with lust for life again. This period of time in our personal story and the story of the land, where anything is possible and reality is filled with the radiance of spring energy, is only meant to last for a brief time, a few weeks in May.

During this time all the flowers hold the potential for perpetuation and future wealth of the land. But then the season turns, and that potential is heavily pruned. Like the multiple shoots of potential on a tree, each story is left to keep growing or cut from its path in time. The purity and hopefulness of the spring, in its maturation, passes through something like a birth canal to the next season. And in the passage there is loss. A late frost, as the potentiated fruit sets, can cause the fruit to drop. Or as commonly as not these years, we get a month long drought in the late spring and all the wild fruit dries up. These miraculous plants know when to let go of their hopes for fruit until the next cycle, in order to preserve their energy to live on. As the drought comes one fruit at a time is lost, the same as their ripening order. First the strawberries, in their tender innocence have so little resilience. A late frost or a week of scorching heat will dry up their flowers and snuff their fruit. If the drought continues then the others follow in order; Pin cherries, Service berries, Gooseberries and Choke cherries, Blue berries, Plums, Black cherry and Haws, Raspberries and black berries. And somewhere in the mix is our domestic polycultural orchard filled with Pears and Apples. I pray we are blessed with their abundance every year, but in such turbulent environmental times this has become only a dream. Under today’s environmental pressures we clearly see the need for diversity of plants and in the landscape. That way something always works out, being more suited to the conditions of the season.

And this happens often now.

If there are no late frosts and enough rain, and the fruit grows, there are still a gambit of challenges that come with summer before that wealth can be claimed. There are pathogens of many kinds like insects, fungi and mold that want the fruit. And then there are the birds and mammals. So even in good years as the seasons turn the net of that spring potential can be pared back.

To a grower, forager and lover of Nature this process of watching the fertility of the land dry up can be devastating. And it happens almost every year now! What can mitigate the devastation and grief around the loss is seeing and knowing you and everything else are part of the bigger story being told by the four Manitous.

We don’t have to be crushed when we are unable to manifest a dream. We can learn not to hold onto our dreams or the potential of these (spring) moments in our life too tightly. To enjoy them for what they are knowing everything will change. To lightly hold the dream like a flower out to the sun, but also be willing to let it whither when the time has passed. To follow the story of the seasons and not work against them. And while in the season the unseasonal changes can be disturbing, the bigger story has a rhythm and is still predictable. We try to control the small seasons in our life with contracts and ownership, of people and manufactured stuff but it never works. Real security and peace only comes when we know nothing is actually changing in the big picture, the cycles are eternal.

Because these patterns will not change, because we can’t change a fated story line, the only choice we really have is in how we see and react to the change. We can accept or even embrace the natural entropy of life, our aging and the decline of the season. Or we can get stuck in our attachment to peak moments, to our dreams and imaginings, and live on in a shadowed land filled with resentments and regrets.

At each turning when the beauty of one season passes through the canal into the next season, into the next chapter of the story, there will be a loss as well as maturation of other potentials that will live on to the next season. Knowing the story helps us accept the seasons and what they bring. But it doesn’t end there. When we know the story we become part of it, and because we are involved we may in fact be able to change parts of the pattern if not the outcome. This isn’t magic, or any kind of magic we don’t know. It’s like when you root for your team or the underdog and give our energy to them, sometimes they win because of that little extra mojo we gave them! Sometimes the ancestors and Gods listen to our prayers. So for me knowing the story also means knowing who to send energy toward or channel it away from.

For example with each seasonal passage, the equinox and solstices, I have prayers where I am thankful for the gifts of the coming season (that I know well having lived here for decades), and give gifts and prayers to the spirits that orchestrate the lands fecundity. I do this in order to ‘seed’ a fruitful future. I also do more spontaneous ceremony and prayers to the players in the moment like to plants or a bird or insect or the rain makers. As well as making offerings to appease spirits or shadow energies so they don’t have to physically manifest.

Growing up with western materialism you might think my prayers are just superstitious. But for me and for tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of years, all our ancestors believed and proved over time that it’s worth making these spiritual actions to seed the future or balance harm. For many ancient and indigenous cultures, our spiritual actions are the same as how we are act in tending to the land’s physical needs. There is no difference in a non-materialistic culture. We seed some things, cull others and harvest in thankfulness as each divine gift of food and medicine’s time comes due.

These realities parted ways and the deeper meaning of our existence here on Earth was lost, when we shifted our thinking to a monotheistic material reality through christianity and then science. But to save this world we must once again come to be married to Her. And in so doing marry the unseen forces that can bring fecundity to land and guide our daily actions.