50 Seasonal Meditations

From what flowering tree
I know not—
But ah, the fragrance!
—Matsuo Bashō

In the change of light, color, and temperature, our lives turn in constant relationship with the seasons throughout our annual circumambulation around the sun. The myriad unique expressions of the seasons shape both the contours of our consciousness and our ways of life, mooring us to the landscape and inviting us into intimacy with the beauty, silence, grief, majesty, emptiness, abundance, lightness, and darkness of Earth.

There was a time when we honored the ways our existence unfolded within this shifting embrace. We found extensions of our inner selves reflected in the sweetness of new blossom, the relief of a storm, the hush of snowfall, and the gift of the harvest. With the bridge between Earth and spirit unobstructed, the self and the seasons moved to a shared rhythm that was simple and sacred.

Nowadays, as deep-seated human-centricity meets the artifices of technology, we are increasingly insulated from the cycles of creation, renewal, growth, decay, and death that turn with the Earth. We have largely forgotten our once-intimate exchange with the seasons and, as a culture, have grown inattentive to the endless gateways that open into reverent relationship with the living world.

The following fifty practices and musings are attuned to the seasons, which, despite the impacts of climate breakdown, still beckon us. This collection offers a way to begin responding to their call. As in our companion volume, Emergence Magazine, Vol. 6: Seasons, a collection of essays, poems, interviews, and photography, this book also expresses the seasons through the frame of invitation, which draws us into attentiveness; celebration, which brings us into joyful reverence; and requiem, which signals loss or asks for mourning. While the practices each align with one of the themes, they often paradoxically spill into the others—for in the uncertainty of our time, when the familiar faces of the seasons are evolving and disappearing rapidly, every seasonal moment can simultaneously be an invitation, a celebration, and a requiem. Each asks for your attention, whether as witness, in remembrance, through joy, grief, love, or a combination of all.

Partly inspired by the Japanese tradition of kigo—words that evoke a specific seasonal moment within haiku—and drawing from The Five Hundred Essential Japanese Seasonal Words—a saijiki, or formal anthology of kigo—these simple prompts call you to be attentive to specific seasonal expressions, beyond the familiar divisions of summer, autumn, winter, and spring.

Similar to haiku, these practices connect mind and heart with the land, drawing you into a state of perception that deepens your spiritual connection with the living world. Involving the cycles of breath, the doorways of the inner and outer senses, playfulness, and physical immersion in the richness of the seasons’ offerings, they bring you into a direct experience of a sudden downpour of rain, the sound of frogs, the presence of too much smoke, a day long with light, and so on. Like you would a book of favorite poems, keep this tucked in your rucksack as you engage with the change of light and all it brings. Within each moment, each day, there is a constant invitation to be present; a call to commune with the Earth.

Rise with the chorus song of birds. Mind emptier in the wake of sleep, what conversation cascades from tree, shrub, air into your ears? So much chatter, so much music being rehearsed and played. What for? Listen for which calls greet and which rejoice in the touch of the sun. Are you participant or audience in this springtime opera? Can you be both?

Go walking and, with the touch of your bare feet on the ground, bid farewell to the frost that has kept you company through the winter’s emptiness—a steely presence holding the roiling growth of roots at bay. Now that this sentinel of quietude has finished its work for the year, the gateway to fervent renewal swings open. Step through it. What yawns, stretches, and stands up in the land, awakening after a long hibernation?

No matter where you are—city, countryside, woodland—the green of spring is becoming visible in some way. Find where this growth is first making itself known: speckles here; tufts, buds, and shoots there. Be attentive to what nascent living things are emerging to greet and color the land. What myriad permutations of beauty and vitality have unfolded on the blank canvas of this landscape made barren by the cold months?

Take a handful of seeds, put your knees in the earth, and make hollows to plant in. Scooping soil over them, imagine the world these seeds will emerge into. What will they offer you: sustenance, beauty, fragrance? How will you give thanks? As you bury them down, contemplate the primordial story of birth and transformation they embody, both literally, in the renewal of life after winter; and spiritually, in the possibility of what can emerge from the depths of the inner worlds. Dwell awhile in this mystery.

When the blossoms of a tree or bush summon your attention, put your nose to them as a way of greeting. Inhale their fragrance, filling your nose and lungs with their scent. Is it delicate, sweet, herbaceous? What does this new colorful presence herald—imminent warmth, the arrival of pollen, the return of bees? Visit the blossoms again and again over the next few weeks. Inhale their fragrance deeply each time. Pay attention to how it evolves.

What construction, both quiet and full, is unfolding? Peek into bushes and shrubs, look in the corners of boughs, at the tops of trees, along gutters and rafters. Take in all the homes that are being built by birds—spaces for nurture, rest, and new life. Is this instinct to settle anew into the landscape within you?

Orient your ears to ways the land is silent—the everyday, original notes of bird twitter, cicada thrum, magpie chime, no longer play. What is the last piece of more-than-human music you recall hearing? What does this place feel like, emptied of conversation and melody? What artificial noise—leaf blower, electric buzz, siren—fills the void? Hum, sing, or whistle. As a human, your song is part of the living world’s soundscape. But when you hear only your voice, what does this solitude open in you?

Sit outside and focus on the breath for several minutes—inhaling the breeze, exhaling it. Let it move through your body. Begin to focus on the fragrances that gild it. Imagine the fullness of this scent filling you. What notes are within it? Rose, the salt of the ocean, gorse, cedar, or eucalyptus oil? What parts of the landscape become present within you, part of you, as you breathe in its smell?

Scatter native flower seeds where blooms used to be. Does it feel like restoration or resistance? Remember the joy you once felt when this place was generously graced with color and fragrance. How will the flowers that grow from these seeds be different? How will your joy be different in the presence of wildness replicated by human hands?

Close your eyes and offer your attention entirely to the cacophony of sound around you. Listen closely for the distinction between notes: melodic trills and stutters; woody raps and metallic clicks. Immerse your ears in the musings, debates, and proclamations of these frogs. How does this change the way you sit in this landscape?

Run, leap, skip to the space where you see the deepest depth of spring: the lush green meadow, the forest in full verdant leaf, the river swollen, the garden erupting with life. Everything in the land is awake, teeming, riotous, rampant, birthing new cycles. Feel your own body as a crescendo of energy as you continue to move with vigor across the land. In spring’s becoming, where everything that was hidden beneath the surface now shows its face and announces its splendor, find yourself, too, coming fully alive.

Go looking for the sounds of honeybees in the usual spots you would find them: lavender bush, apple orchard, flowerbed. When you come upon silence where you once heard buzzing, conjure an image in your mind of the connections bees once traced between the many-rooted beings here. In the absence of bees, how is each life—plant, animal, human—now siloed?

In the early morning, seek a beam of soft light and place a hand or your upturned face into its beckoning gaze. Who else around you—birds, flowers—has been drawn to bask in the light’s fold? Midday now, lay on your back under the sun’s unwavering glare. How does the light embrace you differently? Sitting in the gold of dusk, how does its touch give shape to a landscape turning towards night? As the light changed throughout the day, what essence remained the same?

Step out into the gleam of silver light to look for the ways the moon’s fullness is mirrored in an abundance of nighttime activity. Who is out and about tonight, drawn like you to wonder at the moon? Owl, cricket, firefly? As you bask in lunar light, feeling her cool light surround you, how does the wholeness of her presence feel? What reverence for her opens in you?

Sit close to where the invisible thrum seems to be emanating from. What subtle sounds do you hear within the sea of clicking and chirping? Let your body find the base form of this rhythm and align your breath with its beat, moving as one with the crickets, in time with this constant pulse. What other sounds, more-than-human voices and tempos, are layered on top, making a score?

Returning to the soft, slippery embrace of water, how is your body responding? What do you offer in return? Is it familiar and comforting or shocking and thrilling? Does water rush around you or lap gently at your edges? How does its touch feel on your skin? In what ways does this first swim swing open the doorway to a season of physical closeness with a body larger than yours?

The Earth is bathed in an abundance of light today. What will you do to celebrate? Whatever it is, hold in your heart a gratitude for what light gives you, not just today, but throughout the year as it crescendos into this summer solstice. As light begins to recede in the evening, offer this gratitude to the Earth as you bask in the last moment of closeness you feel with the sun.

Immerse yourself in the dense mix filling the air. What smells is the heat coaxing out? Separate the man-made from the natural. Asphalt, trash, the tang of gasoline. Tree oils, grass, warm bodies of water, ripe fruit, blooms. Is the stench one of life or rot? Can it be both? See how they bleed into each other, the sun melting all into one. Describe it. Is it repulsive or intoxicating?

What voices does the storm speak with: the ancient speech of the wind; the drama of downpour; the sharp tongue of lightning? Speak back. What do you say? As the sky swirls and roils and the storm builds momentum—crack after crack after crack—what does it break in the land? A blanket of humidity? A dry spell? Cleansed in sound, water, light, how do you join the Earth in reveling at the reset?

Find a comfortable place in the understory and cast your eyes skywards. Drink in the sight until you feel intoxicated with the abundance of green. Focus your gaze on the different permutations of hue, light, and wind that create sage green, juniper green, viridian green, and so on. Locate the lightest, and then the next lightest, and continue to travel further and further into the spectrum of color until you are resting in its depths. Attentive to the myriad greens in just the trees above you, see the beauty and multiplicity of everything rooted around you reaching for the sky.

Feeling hot, slow, and heavy, settle into the most comfortable spot you can possibly find outdoors—a nook at the base of a tree; a pool of warm water; the long grass of a field. How does it feel to have sun under your skin? Close your eyes and imagine yourself melting into the land. What flows between its body and yours? In this delicious repose, feel how you are held by the Earth. Perhaps She is languorous today too—warmed through by the sun. How do you hold Her back?

As you sit, wilting, what words come to you to describe the heat? Oppressive, suffocating, scorching, torturous? Violent words? What is burning away in and around you? What do you desire in this moment—a storm to break the heat, the cooling wash of rain? When these don’t come, how does the heat propel you out of the landscape? Does it bully you into the artificial embrace of the man-made?

Stand in the torrent of rain, open to receive its blessing. As the water lands on your skin, imagine it sinking below its surface and into the depths of your body. What in you rejoices? What in the land around you rejoices? Does the earth sing in delight? Inhale the scent of wet soil. What sudden vitality can you smell?

What calls “pick me, pick me” to you from the veggie patch or fruit tree? Let your eyes soak up the feast presenting itself to you—jewels of berries, clusters of figs, juicy tomatoes. Step out of your mind, and let your body be completely drawn by the call of ripeness and abundance. What do you pick? The Earth is generous and offering Herself to you. As you harvest, thank Her for making your life not only possible—but joyous and delicious.

What in your body longs for the cool balm of shade? Go in search of the perfect tree under which to retreat from the sun. As you settle into the dark green coolness, open your attention to the rooted being that offers you this space. Ask how they might be coping in the burn of heat. While they provide shade to anyone who needs it, who offers them protection and refuge?

Place your hand on soil and feel its dryness. Imagine it to be an extension of your body. How would you feel to be without water for this long? Picture the roots of the plants around you desperately reaching for a sustenance that is not there. Despite the absence of moisture, how is the memory of water present in the land? What has perished because this memory was too distant?

What emotions open in you as you witness plants once nourished by the sun now harmed by it? Has a primordial friend become a foe? Remember back to when the land was lush and fertile. How does it feel now in comparison? A cycle broken, what will happen to the soil, the buried seeds, the trees and their leaves? Can you give water, or is it beyond what you can do? How is it to feel helpless as you bear witness?

How is the summer keeping its grip on the land? What arrivals have been held at bay—auburn leaves; crisp air; hazy skies? Catch your reaction to the continuation of warmth—is it gladness, surprise?—and look beyond it to see what is off-kilter. What loss does the immediate pleasure of an endless summer obscure? Be attentive to what cries out around you for a transition to coolness, changing colors, migration, decay.

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?

How does the world suddenly become smaller; the sky, the horizon, the garden, more intimate? What is held within the shroud of grey—no passing summer downpour or shower, but the staunch presence of rain? Not just a spatter but a dousing. Join the Earth as the rain quenches Her thirst and wipes the late summer dust away. Welcome the onset of damp and rot; the breaking down of old, the turn towards something new.

Before the sun is high, take a big lungful in through your nose and hold it for a few seconds—inviting the brisk presence of crisp cool air into you. What feelings or memories does this familiar presence, arriving again, evoke for you? Breathing deeply with eyes closed, find what fragrances the change in temperature brings into sharp focus. A distant woodsmoke, the edge of decay, the last scent of summer blooms. What retreats as a tide of coolness moves in?

What has called the mushrooms to reveal themselves? See how they bloom in response. Whether you pick them or bend down to greet them, touch and smell how deeply of the earth they are. Envision the mycorrhizal network beneath you, connecting each fruiting fungi, transferring water and nutrients. Amid the decay and decomposition of the season around you, imagine this life-sustaining network traveling up through the soles of your feet, linking you into this hidden system of nourishment that continues.

Sit under the canopy of a turning tree with your notebook and a pen and look up. Make a list of every single color that you see. Some will be easily recognized: burnt umber, vermillion, mustard yellow. Others less familiar will need names of your own creation. Gather a few fallen leaves and press them in your book—a reminder of the brilliance of color for the coming bleakness.

Set aside a few hours to lie in your garden, on a rooftop, or in a park or field. Flat on your back, arms and legs outstretched, look up at the expanse of the sky. Like people-watching at a train station, see who is coming and going. Swallow, duck, goose? What does their passage look like above you? What longing does this flight of birds, their pull of home or call of distant land, stir in you? If the sky is empty, what cycle feels halted or broken?

Moon rising, harvest from whatever garden you may have—veggie patch, community garden, herb bush or flowerpot. As you work under its hue, like generations of farmers before you, what do you and the moon exchange? How does your touch, nurture, and gratitude differ when guided by its silver light? With what you’ve taken, cook or add it to a meal—a celebration of the moon’s fullness reflected in the abundance you now enjoy.

Stand outside making sure you are not in harm’s way. Relax your body into the rush of the wind around you; open to it making contact both soft and firm. Does it barrel into your side? Kiss you on the cheek? Whip up your hair? How does its force shift your perception of self? You are but a small body amid the wild wind. Where has this presence come from? Where is it going? What does it bring with it? What does it take away?

Pay attention to how you breathe when shrouded in smoke. Are your in-breaths shallow? Does your chest feel constricted? Do you hesitate before filling your lungs? Name all the places the smoke is leaving its residue: the folds of your linen; the back of your throat. How long does the smoke stay, refusing to leave? What story is it trying to tell you?

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?

Feel the cold breath of frost with the soles of your feet. What has been interrupted? What clock is running too fast? What bloom and vegetable, in their final flourish, will now perish? Feel into your own body. How does it respond to the presence of frost now that it is thrust headlong into the cold without the usual transition towards it? Where will all the unused vitality go? What is unfinished?

Take a walk in the afternoon for as long as the light is present. Give attention only to the rhythm of your breath and footsteps until your mind softens. Take in the presence of the light. Mid-winter, how does your body instinctively savor it? As the light of day quickly becomes dusk—the light grainy, the world looking like it belongs to a roll of old film—what does the fleeting quality of the light open in you before you are lost to the dark?

Early winter, lights off, sit in the darkness. Give your eyes ample time to adjust. Greet it with openness. See how the lack of light does not equal blackness, nothingness, but renders all in new texture. Lines become shapes become colors and hues of blue, black, and indigo. What within and without reveals itself to you? How does the loudness of your human presence become muted? Does something much more ancient make itself known?

Collect some dry kindling from a forest or woodland near you, taking only what you need. Carrying it back to your home, think about how these dead limbs of trees and bastions of sunlight will soon be alive with flames that will warm your bones. What stirs at the thought of creating coziness amid cold? Set and light the fire in your hearth, and feed it until it’s roaring. As the space fills with warmth, how does the fire’s brightness and embrace draw you in?

Walk through a tree-filled place. Reflect on what is essential in this time of sparseness. Bring attention to the in and out of your breath. Imagine now, the respiration of the trees—first the cycle of oxygen and carbon, and then the bigger cycle of presence and absence as leaves bud, grow full, and fall to the ground. This moment, an “in-breath,” with trees stark and bare, reflects this state of absence. Reflect on this absence, that what appears to be empty is just a space between breaths, a pause before growth begins anew.

Summon a memory of when stars were bright and stark in cool clear skies. What barrier is between you and the heavens now—smog, light pollution, tall buildings? How is the feeling of being on this planet different when insulated from the expanse of the heavens? Constant companions—Earth, nearby planets, and the galaxy—separated. Streaky blackness above you, linger in this loneliness. Remember that the stars, though invisible, are ever-present.

How does this blanket of white change the shape of the landscape? Lay a part of your body into the snow—foot mark, hand print—then lay down on your back, touching the cold that is making itself known and tangible to you. What is it like to make an ephemeral imprint of yourself in the land, the land taking your shape only to soon erase it? Sit in this fleeting touch between you and snow.

On the coldest day of the year so far, make a soup. Any type of soup will do. As you stand at the stovetop, offer your gratitude to the Earth, with each circle of the spoon, for the nourishment She continues to give despite the apparent barrenness of the season. Soup in a bowl, savor the feeling of its warmth spreading through your hands; its steam puffing up into your face. How is the sunlight embodied in each spoonful making itself known in your body? How does its presence, in the depths of freeze, bring a promise of cyclicity?

Put on enough layers to be just warm. Stand outside in a shaded, chilly spot. What sensation does your skin, packed under down, wool, cotton, experience? How does the cold feel on exposed skin—nose, earlobes, fingertips? Does your body huddle, tense, or shift away from the breath of winter? Why do you recoil? See that no matter how much you try to insulate your body against the presence of cold, you remain pervious to its touch. She finds the cracks and gets in. Let Her.

Look around and name the flowers that are open and expectant ahead of their time in your garden or local park. What caused them to arrive, their scents filling the air too soon? How has their confusion bled into pollinators, birds, and you? How will this throw the calendars of other beings off-kilter?

What are the differences between your memory of this place and how it is right now? What is no longer present in the absence of snow? The crunch underfoot; a certain quality of bright, blue, white light; a silence brought only by a morning of fresh powder? What is it like not to feel this familiar friend? Has the intimacy of your own relationship with home been altered, as something so familiar is lost?

In the depth of winter, go to the quietest place you know—one where human clamor is absent, or at least as distant as possible. Open your ears and then your heart. Listen for what silence sounds like in the land around you. Once familiar, slow your mind by focusing on your breath, and search for such a space within yourself. Delve into that stillness. Find land and self entwined in quietude.