Autumnal Equinox

Heading into the Darkness, September 2024

Up till this years autumnal equinox every morning our homestead has been covered in a thick layer of fog. Sometimes the afternoon sun will manage to pierce through, but most often than not, the fog will stay in its place, lingering over us like a bad omen for whole days and nights on end.

Come nightfall moonlight is dispersed and distorted by the fog, leaving a sense of something being hidden away from us. Something we were not yet ready to grasp, or maybe just not willing to, not quite yet.

To be true I have it quite hard to say goodbye to all the warm pleasures of summer, as this harvest season has been one of our best ever. Along with our two year old we have been to the garden and to the forest to collect berries, mushrooms and seemingly endless tomatoes from our little greenhouse.

However, earlier in the week during one of the rare days were the sun shone through the fog, we ripped out all the tomato plants in the greenhouse, plucked green tomatoes until we could no more, and packed the rest of the dying plants on the compost heap. I made pickled green tomatoes yesterday, and tomorrow I will be harvesting the very last of our produce: rhubarb to make into some rhubarb jam. It was long overdue, because the greenhouse had been overgrown and we had been unable to enter for weeks. Still, I was saddened to see them go, as we had been out in the green house for almost every day that summer, up until it was only our 2 year old that could crawl in.

Going out to harvest, cooking in the kitchen, and preserving everything has left me with so much comfort and a strong sense of providing. Now, however, harvest is ending, and there shall be no more preserving. We will have to make due with what we have, and I will have to make do without this great activity that has been entertaining both my self and our child for months.

Our home on this years Autumnal Equinox.

On the very day of autumnal equinox, the day where darkness had overwon the light, the morning sky was clear. When the sky finally awoke, late in the morning it was crisp and revealing only the tiniest crescent moon. A moon that will also soon be immersed in complete darkness.

For me the new moon signals a time to turn inwards and to turn down in pace. The same is true for the autumnal equinox, and while we may not feel ready for it, for saying goodbye to summer and all its warmth and grace, the autumnal equinox is a reminder that alongside great productivity, lightness and activity there should be rest, darkness and passivity.

Since I came to the conclusion that I would no longer be able to harvest and preserve during the autumn and winter, I have been eagerly trying to come up with new, indoors activities that could replace the summer activities I lost. I have been thinking about starting cheese making, kombuchas and even water kefir grains.

The horrible truth is, however, late autumn is not the time for starting new things, there will be plenty of time for dreaming of ideas in winter and beginning new projects in spring. Late autumn is for ending projects without filling the gaps with new things. Autumn is for rest, for reading, for knitting and for nesting.

Coincidentally I myself is moving into the third trimester of my second pregnancy. That is why, even more so than ever, rest and passivity is upon me, whether I like it or not. That is why the autumnal equinox is clear about is learnings for me this year. That is why this year I will do my very best to embrace the darkness.

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