Halfway, my Friends

Fire and Ice, the two seasons of the ancient indigenous people of the North.

The dreaming time approaches. As the days and nights split themselves into equal lengths, the dreaming time approaches. The equinox marks the halfway point between the longest day and the longest night. The dreaming time begins.

As the northern hemisphere tilts away from Sol, the giant star that illuminates Earth, the seasons shift from the Fire time to the Ice time.

It’s the time for dreaming. Nourish those dreams with the fruits and herbs of the season. Fill those dreams with the fullness of Autumn.

Preparing a winter tonic.

When the nights lengthen, the dreaming time descends deeper into the time of Ice, and you will be prepared. Gather up the flowers and fruit to fill your mind so that when the Ice time is heavy upon us, you will close your eyes and see vines growing, tiny shoots emerging, and leaves unfurling.

Remember to gather up the threads of life that flow through mushrooms, birds, and burgeoning buds. Weave them into a tapestry of living beings to inhabit the dark days of winter.

Infusing herbs into honey to make an instant tea during the dark days of the Ice time.

The dark times are a time of rest. A time to revisit and revision. A time to learn a little bit more about who we are and who we want to become.

If this all sounds a bit hokey, woo, or whatever word that sets my words aside as sentimental drivel, then consider that I say these words to ward off an inner darkness in the time of outer darkness. I say these words to remember that I am a tiny star in a galaxy of stars, a grain of sand, a pebble. To see myself in an ecological context even if that ecology seems to be breaking down.

Because I believe the breaking down, winding down, and deconstruction is cyclical. And just as the roots of the plants and the trees retract and reach deeper into darkness, time will bring them out again.

With or without me.

And my curiosity for what will be, will have to be satisfied with the turning of the seasons, the turning of the Earth. The waiting. The turning inward as I sit like a candle in the dark.

Ancestral healing starts in the dreaming.

Leah is the archetypal herbalist. You know the one, living at the edge of town with all of the weird plants. Leah Wolfe, MPH, is a community herbalist and health educator at the Trillium Center. Leah’s background is in health research, folk arts, nonprofits, community gardening, and herbalism. Look to Leah’s online and in-person classes to delve into the seasons and the plants for personal and community healing at the Trillium Center. Fire and Ice is a chapter in a year-long course called Northways Herbalism that traverses the herbal world of seasonal living.