Honoring Spring

Create an Altar for the Season and the Earth

Spring in the Rockies: Forsythia blooming in a neighbor's yard, a red fox with unusual coloration, scarlet globemallow leaves greening up on the trail, snow flying past my glass prayer flags.

When someone has spent so much time on social media that their grip on reality has loosened, they are often implored to “touch grass”—get offline, go outside, smell the roses. It’s meant as a reminder that there’s a living, breathing world right there that can restore their health, if only they would venture out to it. —Hamish Mckenzie, co-founder of Substack, “The Substack Post”

Happy First Day of Spring! The world may be a mess, but today is the Equinox, when the day and night are equal lengths. It’s the official first day of spring here in the Northern Hemisphere, and the autumnal equinox in the southern hemisphere.

The equinox reminds us to “touch grass,” as

Hamish McKenzie

wrote in the quote above, a ringing endorsement for practicing our terraphilia. To celebrate that life continues despite all. To ground ourselves and draw our strength from the Earth. To fill our hearts and spirits and bring our best selves to whatever is ahead. To enter into this time of change and use it well.

Here is a practice to help you mark the equinox and the changing seasons, whichever hemisphere you live in.

Create An Earth-Altar

Some altars: My council of fetishes, family photos, found horsehair goldfinch nest, and equine talismans.

memento n. an object kept as a reminder or souvenir of a person or event. Origin: late Middle English (denoting a prayer of commemoration): from Latin, literally ‘remember!’, imperative of meminisse.

Since childhood, I have collected and arranged objects that are meaningful to me: special pebbles and feathers and leaves, bleached bones found by a trail, abandoned bird nests, bits of weathered wood. (I was that kid whose jeans pockets wore out from all I stuffed in them!)

Notes, carved figurines, miniature baskets woven of pine needles. Photos of people and places I love. Mementoes or talismans which connect me to the cycle of life and the rhythm of the seasons.

When a friend pointed out that these arrangements were my “altars to the Earth,” I recognized that the intentional if unconscious gatherings honor my heart-connection to this planet and my kin, human and moreso.

Some of these altar assemblages have traveled with me for decades, through many moves and changes. Some are more ephemeral, lasting only for a season. All grace my daily life as reminders to practice my terraphilia.

Here’s your challenge:

Create your own altar to honor the changing season. It might include spring flowers or new leaves. Sea glass or shells picked up on a beach walk; pebbles from a hike. Perhaps seed packages to remind you to plant, or dried gourds from a summer’s harvest. Photos of springtime memories or antepasados, ancestors who taught you to be mindful and absorb the season.

Spend some time envisioning what spring (or autumn) means to you, what connects you to the earth wherever you are. What you want to remember in marking this changing of the seasons.

Arrange those mementoes somewhere you will see them every day. Greet them as you pass with words of praise and prayer, with touch or simply a bow of recognition. Let their presence remind you of the richness of the season, and nurture your terraphilia, your cell-deep connection to this earth and the web of lives that make the planet home to us all.

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Enriching First-Day-of-Spring reads from around Substack

If you are one of those who pay attention to changing seasons, which are all governed by the relationship between the sun and the earth, you may want to pause and welcome the vernal equinox, when the amount of night and day are about the same. —Gary Gruber

CELEBRATING A CHANGE

The world is waking up, rolling its shoulders, cracking its stiff neck and taking its first sure steps into the next growing season. … I am always elated with the coming of spring and the rituals of trimming and preparing the garden, and yet I also find myself feeling bittersweet at each season’s transition.

—Singer-Songwriter Carrie Newcomer

The Both/And of Seasons

I have been dreaming of bears. Not the dreaming of sleep, but the feeling I get in my body this time of year when I know the bears are stirring. I imagine them unfurling inside the skin of the earth with the instinct that says return, bend toward light. I feel them lumbering slow-footed in the woods, scraping exposed ground for grubs. Their bodies move as shadows, as a still-wild piece of me immersed in the rhythm of the seasons.

—Writer and Teacher Karen Auvenin, “The Poetry By Which I Live”

The Poetry by Which I Live

And one more link with a profound meditation on coping with grief and photos of her own beautiful nature-altars, from Stephanie Raffelock of Creative Eldering:

A Response to Our Grief

[I forgot to include this in my original post. My apologies, Stephanie!]

Equinox blessings to you all,

Susan