Winter: Changing Seasons in a Modern Frenzy

I appreciate the seasons--they are a piece of who we are as a family of pagans with an earth based bent. The seasons that we experience serve to create rich history and mythology as well as influence culture and the way we nurture our bodies. 

As part of our eclecticism we learn about many paths even if we don't practice or agree with them. One thing that becomes clear is that even for those who don't claim the mantle of season, this earth based bent creeps in like the aroma of soil, seeps in like trickles of water in ashes, convects around us like warm heated air or sea cooled breezes, to shape and influence our being.

The cycles of the earth run through and around who we are as breathing, respiring, living creatures, as people of this planet.  We share the sun for life, the earth for canvas, water for our persistent thirst, and the global currents of wind and water. Yet, the way those cycles, seasons, interweaving of universe, planet and life can vary in significant ways dependent on where on the planet you are at any given moment. Not every where has summer, winter, fall and spring, just as not every place is divided into rainy season/dry season or six months dark/six months light:12 hour even split all year round.

Here, our cycles are driven by Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring. Oddly though, Winter has shifted further and further past the solstice. It has either come in like a lamb and out like a 'lamb annoyed by the change in the way seasons manifest', or like a tempestous torrid love affair between winter and summer, which births odd mountains of snow sandwiched between nascent sunny spring days and cool fall ones -- all in the same month.

Each year it feels less as if the seasons own their time span, and more as if the seasons are bleeding together in a swirling painting of modern art.  We have had a few snows, but much more this winter season we have had waxing spring days leading to cool, sunny, summer days that waned to cool fall ones, dipping only for a moment to the cloudy threat of winter and then back to spring.

Today it is snowing again and I wonder if the seasons weep for the loss of their separation, or if they embrace the transition to a new incarnation.  Does it spell impending disaster from our environmental self single mindedness, or a shift to a new way of being seasoned in this hemisphere? Most likely it is only me as the particular mammal that I am that even considers those as possibilities, as the seasons simply are, and change as they will change.

Meanwhile,

soft snows drift lightly to a delicious

fluff on the ground,

that I am sure

my daughter will scoop

up for creation of a winter

delicacy before

the springs can ensconce to summer to

for now,

take the snows away.