I'm thinking about the idea of the equinox: 24 hours supposedly* divided evenly between day and night, happening twice a year. Half of one, half another, and yet that isn't at all how we experience day or night. My day starts when I wake up, ends when I fall into sleep. This time of year night, meaning darkness falling, begins before I sleep, and I definitely go to sleep more than 12 hours after I awaken. The Latin roots may mean "equal night"—aequus (equal) plus nox (night)—but that doesn't mean we divide our energies equally between day and night or that I rest as much as I wake.
And yet, and yet—
These astronomical grace notes of the year give us reason to pause. Reason to recognize we live within larger and larger spheres. We may pause within our minds, yet we're always moving even when we're standing still, riding atop an earth spinning on its axis at over 1,000 miles per hour (1,040 at the equator) and whirling around the sun at 67,100 miles per hour. The Sun and Earth orbit the center of our galaxy at something like 447,000 miles per hour. The Milky Way Galaxy is moving. Everything is moving. We are never, ever still. Or we are both still and moving, half and half.
The ancient Celts (who provided some of my ancestry), the Mayans and others used the wheel to symbolize or track time and the seasons. We now enter the season of Mabon (a name given to it in the 1970s, not an ancient traditional name). This is a time of harvest, balance, reflection, releasing what we don't need as we approach the dark. A site on the pagan or Wiccan calendar tells me "the ancient Mayans designed Chichen Itzá to mark the equinox sun, while Neolithic and Bronze Age peoples built sites like Carin T in Ireland and Mnajdra in Malta that align with the sunrise on this day." The Goddess moves from Mother to Crone, a journey I'm taking over the decades although the role of Mother stays with me always.
This is harvest season. My shelves are lined with row upon row of jars, jams, jellies, and chutneys, apples making a prominent appearance thanks to an unexpected gift from a stranger. The ground may be cold, the skies grey, as we move toward winter, but blackberry, elderberry, cherry, hot peppers, mint, tomatoes, and other sweet or savory flavors will join freshly baked brown bread on my plate. This comfort food rewards my labor planting, tending, picking, gleaning, cooking, canning, kneading, shaping, baking. I learned this from my parents, who stocked basement shelves and freezer through summer and fall to lay up stores for the cold season. Measuring time by what ripens, what is past, tells me when summer is turning toward fall.
Emergence Magazine provides me with seasonal meditations. These ask that we pay attention, real attention, to the changes in the world around us. This time of year I both see and feel the change in the angle of the light over the course of the day. Seasonal practice #29, "Slanted Light: for when the sun is slung low," speaks to this:
"Place yourself in a patch of shallow sunshine. What hush does this low light bring to the landscape? How is each space listening to the changing of the light? While the glare and warmth of summer feel like an out-breath, this muted, shallow quality of light is like an in-breath. In long shadows and pale hues, what retreats?"
Then there is #38, "Falling Leaves: for when a colorful carpet adorns the ground":
"Lie down in a pile of fallen leaves. Touch them. Smell them. Are they damp, spiced, sweet with the smell of rot? Imagine the cycle of decay and renewal taking place right beneath you—the leaves slowly breaking down, becoming soil. How do you feel this cycle present within you at this moment: what parts of yourself do you feel called to shed and transform in order for new growth to begin?"
I happened across a piece on the idea of knitting the wheel of the year, each season suggesting different projects, different weights of yarn for the changing daylight and temperatures. As a knitter I love this idea of settling into the season as I settle into my chair with yarn and needles (and a woolsucking cat who needs to be kept far, far away from my tasty bag of merino cat snacks).
My hemisphere of the Earth begins to tilt away from the Sun, taking us from warmth into cold, from light into more and more darkness. The leaves reveal their true colors, the scarlet and gold and orange there all along beneath the green of chlorophyll. I gather leaves on my walks and arrange them in patterns by my door, my "leafspedition land art" decorating the earth for a few days before becoming earth. Like the leaves, I settle into what I am becoming, the yarn in my hands becoming something new.
*I say the equinox is supposedly an equal division between day and night because the equilux, the actual half-and-half division, happens a few days after the equinox, much to my surprise. The Farmer's Almanac explains:
"The Latin root says “equal night,” but the day of the equinox is not actually the day day and night come out exactly even at most places. That day is the equilux, and in the Northern Hemisphere it falls a few days after the September equinox. Two effects pull the dates apart: the Sun is a disc, not a point, so sunrise begins the moment the top edge clears the horizon, and Earth’s atmosphere bends sunlight, letting us see the Sun slightly before it rises and slightly after it sets.
Together those effects add several minutes of daylight to the equinox day. For most of the continental United States, the equilux in 2026 lands between September 25 and 27, with northern states reaching equal day and night a day or two earlier than southern ones. After that, the night side runs ahead, and the days shorten in earnest."
It seems to me, then, that we may think we see balance even though it actually falls somewhere else, perhaps a bit later and in a different place than we thought. We may find our balance standing still while moving faster than we can imagine, watching the light change and the leaves fall.
"Equinox"
Richard Wehrman
The Garden releases its last
radiance, not as something failed,
but as its full reason for being: to give
continually, to its last bit of energetic being.
Its giving is its beauty. It is a smile,
it is the heart of love.
“Autumn”
Rainer Maria Rilke
Leaves are falling, falling as if from afar,
as if, far off in the heavens, gardens were wilting.
And as they fall, their gestures say "it's over."
In the night the heavy earth is falling
from out of all the stars into loneliness.
We are all falling. This hand here is falling.
Just look: it is in all of us.
Yet there is one who holds this falling
with infinite tenderness in her hands.
"Natural History"
Sam Hamill
May she
be happy, filled
with the essential,
working in the twilight,
on her knees, at autumn equinox,
gathering the stories
of silence together,
preparing to meet the winter.
"Autumnal Equinox"
Terri Kirby Erickson
Autumn
shakes the summer
from our minds until it falls like leaves,
skittering down an empty street.
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