Out of Season
Recognising the rhythms within, not just around us
A sunny, rainy, cold and steamy day at Craters of the Moon, Aotearoa/New Zealand
There’s a fair bit happening in the garden right now, though it feels slow and quiet, especially compared to a couple of months ago.
Seasonal transitions in nature are hard to miss - temperatures shift, skies changing colour, mushrooms appearing overnight, summer vines drying off and making space for leafy green crops, or the sudden burst of life as the weather warms, plants and animals wake up, new shoots appear, and the natural world springs into action (yes, I know *audible eye roll*).
I could write a 700-word post just cataloguing these changes, though I'd much rather go out into the forest and experience them. Allow myself to be absorbed into all that quiet, purposeful activity. Watch the light arriving at a different angle, notice the smell of things decomposing, making room, becoming something else.
As human animals, we are very much part of these cycles too. Even when our modern lives look nothing like it.
Here in Melbourne, we are officially in the thick of the cold season. It has been warmer than usual, but we’re still experiencing rainy mornings, short days, cold nights, and a garden that has settled into something else. Slower, less flashy, turned inward.
The seasonal change is clear when we look outside, but I wonder how well we actually honour that within ourselves. Living a fast-paced urban life, so disconnected from seasonal rhythms, can often leave us feeling tired and out of sync in ways that are hard to name. A kind of ambient exhaustion, a low hum of something being off, without a clear cause. We push through our own winter periods with the same schedule, the same expectations, the same to-do lists we had in the long, bright days of summer. We are rarely afforded the pause to ask whether what we're demanding of ourselves actually matches the season we're in.
The flow of life and the circumstances we find ourselves in often can't be changed abruptly. And if we can't just step away from it all, how do we even approach this idea of noticing and honouring our seasons? It feels like a luxury.
I think we start small.
Small, intentional acts of alignment- paying more attention to what our body and brain are asking for, noticing the state of being we're actually in, and letting that inform something, even one small thing, about how we move through our day.
If you were to make more space for yourself right now, what would that look like? How would you feel? Try and imagine it for a moment. Is it rest or movement you seek? Novelty or stability? Community or solitude? You may notice several come up, some even opposing needs… allow them space to show up.
Now, can you find a way to make room for one of those? Identify something that feels simple and accessible. Maybe it's lowering your output in an area that can sustain it, housework, for example (seriously though, those dishes can wait). Or perhaps asking a loved one for something different: “can we just sit quietly together tonight and not talk?”
Redefining some of what is expected of you, saying no, changing priorities. Start small. Recognising these feelings and needs can be overwhelming, especially if we try tackling them all at once. Microdose the change you want to create and see how you feel.
Then let those new feelings and realisations inform your next small step.
And then the next.
Slowing down and noting the little things
External seasons are easy to observe, while the internal ones ask a little more of us.
There are seasons of high energy and outward momentum, of creativity and expansion, and there are seasons of drawing inward, of slowness and necessary dormancy.
We humans tend to celebrate some and pathologise others - I know I am very much at fault for that too. I work against myself trying to override them, or get consumed by them. It hurts and it's not good for me, this I know.
Neither is inherently better than the other.
They all exist, and they are all needed. My job, as I see it, is to learn to accept them and adjust my movements accordingly.
Observing our current season and honouring it - might be one of the more quietly radical things we can do.
What are you doing today to acknowledge and respect the season you are in?