Long Dark Night
As we approach the longest night of the year, I have deliciously succumbed to the cosy pleasures of hygge: warm drinks, extra layers, early nights to bed after family dance parties.
Welcome to deep dark winter. As we approach the longest night of the year, I have deliciously succumbed to the cosy pleasures of hygge: warm drinks, extra layers, early nights to bed after family dance parties.
Even my chickens have begun a period of protracted rest and snuggles. We no longer receive their delicious daily eggy offerings and instead find them cuddling together in the hutch, clucking contentedly.
Our earliest astronomers, the First Australians were able to measure the solstice at the Wurdi Youang stone arrangements 80km from Melbourne. Here, carefully arranged rocks aligned with the setting sun at the winter, and summer solstices as well as the equinox. Whilst things seem to slow in winter, finding time to become observers of our inner and outer landscapes can be fruitful.
I await the cascading of the post solstice wattle burst, the sunshine-yellow flowering of one species of acacia after another as the days begin to lengthen. For now, I cosy up and slow my pace for rest facilitates rejuvenation, and gestation precipitates life anew.
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Post Harvest
This time of harvest was especially potent after the long slow gestational period of last year's calm, where, in those contemplative waters, new possibilities could bubble and swirl.
After the forced slowing of 2020 our community has emerged hungry for action, creation and collaboration. Despite the fertile spring imagery you may have seen in the Easter aisles of your local Woolies, this time of year in our hemisphere is post-harvest, a time to preserve the crops that grew in great abundance during the increased warmth and energy of the summer season and to prepare for the slow descent into darker days and longer nights. In my own kitchen, I have apple cider bubbling away in big glass vats, harvested in early autumn from the apple orchards of my in- laws. Out of the cider I will make immune boosting cider vinegar tinctures to keep the body strong through the more taxing winter months. In older cultures, a portion of cider was offered back to the strongest tree of the orchard to ensure a bountiful season the following year, cycles following cycles.
As we now wake to dripping windows and the first morning frosts, we find ourselves with less time out and about making the most of long summer evenings. We start to cosy up, cultivating our 'higge' and discovering more time to create. As our community garden has started to slow its production, we look back at a bountiful season ripe with tomatoes, beans, strawberries, sunflowers and zucchini. So too have we seen an abundance of ideas from our community take form out in the world. This time of harvest was especially potent after the long slow gestational period of last year's calm, where, in those contemplative waters, new possibilities could bubble and swirl.
This time of year in the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung language is called Birrang Tonimbuk. As the wombats begin renovating their burrows, the arrival of the morning mists and cool yet drier weather told the local people that it was time to start the year's burn off patterns. Some areas were burnt every year whilst other areas were burnt on a multi year cycle in accordance with cultivation strategies and the totemic system. These highly complex and patterned firestick farming schedules ensured the land was managed and cultivated with deep care, folding in ancient systems of knowledge. In return, the land supported the people, creatures, plants and fungi for tens of thousands of year, or, since time immemorial as it is understood in Indigenous ways of knowing.
May we listen to First Nations voices as we attempt to reconnect with ourselves, rebuild our communities and regenerate the land upon which we work, live and play. May we listen deeply as we create and offer our works to the world.
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Rain Moth Season
As we begin to receive the rains of early autumn, I've been finding the fat translucent-brown cocoons of the Rain Moth strewn about the parklands where I take my afternoon stroll. These juicy grey and white creatures live underground for seven whole years as a grub before pupating and birthing as the moisture seeps back in to the dry summered earth. My daughter collects them and sorts them in her little basket. Rain moth reminds me of the descent that many great creative projects require of us, as they pull us into the fertile underbelly of the underworld.
Rain moths spend seven years underground, deep amongst tree roots and mycelial networks, feeding on the stored sunlight of River Red Gum roots. In this form they are known as Bardi grubs, a delicious and creamy traditional food. During this time of rain, the moths Pupate and then hatch out. In a baccanalian festival that follows, they have a mere twenty-four hours to float and flex, finding lovers, feeling sunlight. Females then cast off thousands of eggs mid flight before themselves becoming a tasty snack for a hungry kookaburra or keen-eyed magpie. Again, the time when we present our work to the world can feel like a fleeting moment to bask in the sun, after all the torturous time underground visioning, preparing, toiling, problem solving. And yet, we continue to thrust into the cycle of creativity over and over, just as these eggs will bury down into soil and hatch into grubs underground, continuing the cycle.
My daughter’s favourite thing to do, when she arrives at the creek in this season of rain and muddy puddles is to strip off and cover herself in thick oozy mud. She reminds me, like the rain moths, of the need to open myself to the creative pulse that charges certain particular moments with a sense of pregnant sensuality and numinosity. Magic is real, life is short, moments are fleeting, and in this time childhood feels like the gift that circles back around for us as parents.
That is, until the walk home from the creek, shivering, the mud starting to dry and crack, lamenting itchy skin and hunger pains at ear-grating decibels. Still, all worth it once back home to be warmed and washed by steamy bath waters.
Whilst the arc of a creative project recedes after its culmination, we can, with practice, learn to let the low glow of completion keep us warm, nourishing us with stored subterranean sunlight until the next surge of inspiration.