The Fertile Dark

We are approaching the equinox, and I can already feel the direction of movement changing.

I notice it every year. As summer begins to loosen its grip and the light slowly diminishes, something in me becomes more awake. I can hear again and breath becomes deeper.

Summer has always been intense for my nervous system. There is so much light, movement, sound, growth, life pushing outward in every direction. I love many things about it, but there is also a strange relief when autumn finally arrives. The world becomes quieter, the edges become clearer, and I find myself returning to a kind of inner concentration that feels deeply natural to me.

This is why I have been thinking so much about the darker half of the year, and the wisdom contained in allowing the movement of life to change direction.

Nature does not attempt to preserve summer. There is no resistance to the diminishing light, no demand for another season of flowering. What has been reaching outward begins to return. Energy moves down into roots. Seeds disappear into darkness. Leaves fall and become part of the ground from which something else will eventually grow.

I grew up in the North, where this turning of the seasons is written deeply into the rhythm of life. For generations, the expansive months of growing, gathering and tending the land gradually gave way to another kind of making. People gathered indoors. Hands continued their work by fire and candlelight. Things were mended, carved, spun and woven. What had been gathered during the light could be worked with in the dark.

I find something deeply nourishing in the old Finnish tradition of puhdetyöt, the quiet work of the darker months.

It reminds me that withdrawal is not the absence of movement. It is a change in its direction.

For movement to remain whole, there has to be both an outward and an inward current. We cannot endlessly exhale. There comes a moment when the breath naturally turns and returns to the body.

I have been feeling that turn very strongly. I hear the constant wishpers of quieting and claryfying movements. The rich moist forest is calling me to wander.

Not as a desire to disappear, but as a desire to gather what has become scattered. To bring my attention closer. To hear what becomes audible when there is less demanding to be heard.

The darker months have never felt empty to me. They feel concentrated. I can create with greater intention here. I can sense the quieter movements underneath everything that has been loud.

There is something of the Hermit in this movement.

The Hermit does not leave the world because there is nothing there for him. He carries a small light into the quiet because some things cannot be heard in the marketplace. His lantern does not illuminate the entire road. It illuminates enough.

There are seasons when life asks us to reach outward, and seasons when it asks us to gather ourselves back.

And I am beginning to understand that following this movement cannot remain only an inner idea. If I want to gather my energy, the way I inhabit the outer world has to change with it. Attention needs a container. Intention needs space.

Sometimes the inward movement asks for an outward form.

The light is beginning its descent.

And something in me wants to follow.