Autumn – it’s coming.  The nights are drawing in, and though the sun’s strength is still strong, there is a chill in the breeze that carries the smell of woodsmoke.  The greening is fading, the vegetation now out of room to grow after a hot summer, and is now an almost choking mass, ready to fall back and rest a while.  Deep within my own soul, I feel these rhythms, and will shortly be following the inspiration I see all around me within nature.  The time for rest is coming, but first there is the harvest, with plenty of hard work still lying ahead.  The bees and wasps are still hard at work, soon to be looking for homes to winter through, should that be in their nature.  The swallows will soon be leaving, the fledglings having already taken to the skies.  They are waiting, waiting for the right wind to take them back, once their food supply begins to wane.  

I simply adore the autumn.  The leaves will soon be changing and falling, the sweet smell of decaying foliage and the crunching of dried vegetation underfoot.  The light changes, so beautifully in the autumn – it has that certain slant that makes things seem even more magical.   

I always thought it was such a shame that we had to go back to school just when the seasons seemed to be slowing down, and the bright colours of the fall were at their peak; it lasted such a short time, I always felt that I was missing it by being kept indoors all day.  Though the colours are not quite as vibrant here in the UK as they are back in the Eastern Woodlands of my ancestral home, they still sing to me, songs of beauty and of rest, of the cycles of time, the tides of life and the passage of time.  Deep within my heart, I feel the changing of the season and welcome it with open arms after summer’s bright energy, stealing into the cool twilight with feet covered in dew.  

Soon the fallow deer will be coming together in greater herds, and the rut will begin – an exciting time before the frosts and snows of winter.  A celebration of life before the seeming death of winter.  I dance closer to my antlered goddess in the autumn and winter, the spirit of Elen calling me to the woods, enticing me to find and seek her out in the wilds amidst the chaotic untidiness of fallen leaves and twigs.  She is calling, and I will soon answer that call with all that I am.  I will dance in the forest with wild abandon, in glorious celebration of this time of the year, and let me soul sing free.  I shall lie quiet beneath the canopy, and listen to the deer herd run past, ghosts flitting through the tree trunks in dappled shade.  I shall rest, easy in the knowledge that my hard work has come to fruition, and I shall be thankful for all that I have.  

In autumn’s light, we count our blessings.