Waking Up For The Dark Half Of The Year

 “Autumn days come quickly, like the running of a hound on the moor.” – Irish Proverb

September is a frantic, exhilarating month. It’s when I finally start to wake up. I hibernate the ‘wrong way round’ – I go to ground for the light months and wake up for the dark half of the year. 

However, as inspiring as September can be, it’s also overwhelming. There’s almost too much going on in the natural and unnatural world, and it’s felt that way this year, especially. 

Shopping, something that’s always been overwhelming, is made even more challenging with the influx of Halloween and Yuletide paraphernalia, most of which seems to get more disconnected from the celebrations as the years go on. I love Yuletide, but I don’t want to be eating mince pies in October.

I was disorientated and dazed during the sweltering September days that just beset us. The number of times I went out in my ‘big coat’ only to shed it minutes after leaving the house because of a sudden heat wave better suited to a late Summer day in the South of France is ridiculous. It scared me. It would be unnatural if it didn’t.

As I’ve gotten older, I rarely will time to pass. It’s uncomfortable to think I used to wish it away with no second thought. I longed for this September and all its frenzy to slow the fuck down. But the more I hoped for that to happen, the faster time galloped. It was only in the last week or so that I could harness my time and make the most out of it, and it was cutting ties with technology last thing at night and first thing in the morning that helped. Revelation of the century, huh? 

The impact of switching my phone off at night and not putting it on within the first few hours of the day is significant. Rather than checking Messenger while eating my breakfast, I watch how the honeyish light plays across my daughter’s face, whose teeth are falling out so fast she’ll soon have to have soup for breakfast. This positive impact of this disconnect can carry me through the day, and it’s becoming easier to abandon my phone for hours at a time.

I went to a Waldorf School where celebrating nature was as much a part of the curriculum as math. We embraced each season, though I especially remember celebrating the golden season. By the end of November, I’d feel rich with all the experiences, from harvesting the vegetables from fields that ran alongside our school to flying kites on the moor top. By the end of this month, I want to feel enriched in the ways I used to be. 

I’ve said, more times than enough, that I was a pagan before I was fully aware of what the word meant. Samhain is the beginning of the New Year for witches, and for me, it’s always felt a more natural place to pick up and begin again than in January. My brain wants January to be the time of new beginnings, but my heart knows otherwise. My heart knows I start to bloom in Autumn, as does my work. The words from Horatio Clare about writing during this season resonated with me and I’d like to leave you with them because I think they’ll resonate with many of you too: ‘The ideas come fresh, the sparkle of the days and their drawing in seems to put a fire under them, and the approach of the dark says ‘Haste!’