We dance our wildness....

“The wild is an integral part of who we are as children. Without pausing to consider what or where or how, we gather herbs and flowers, old apples and rose hips, shiny pebbles and dead spiders, poems, tears and raindrops, putting each treasured thing into the cauldron of our souls. We stir our bucket of mud as if it were, every one, a bucket of chocolate cake to be mixed for the baking. Little witches, hag children, we dance our wildness, not afraid of not knowing.”  

~Emma Restall Orr~  

 

Today, I feel Autumn in the air.  It usually happens for me in July, just as I feel Spring in the air in February.  Even with the heat and humidity, there is a slight coolness in the breeze that portends Autumn's arrival right around the bend. The shifting light is slightly, but noticeably different.  The air smells different - it's no longer the Spring/Summer fragrance of wild roses and honeysuckle, but something more earthy, musky, mysterious.

Autumn, for me, begins on Lammas, the first harvest and is my favorite season of the year.  The abundance of crops, the intensity of color, the laziness of Summer switching gears and rushing to ripen fruits and vegetables before the arrival of the inevitable first frost.  The dance between the fullness of Life and the closeness of Death - one tumbles into the other fearlessly, never doubting the endless cycles around our Sun.  It's simply a magnificent time!

(The image above was on my old blog and I'm not sure where I grabbed it on the internet. If this is your image, please let me know so that I can credit properly.)