Alternative Wheel: Other seasonal cycle stories

When this column started, it was all about exploring different ways of thinking about the wheel of the year, reflecting on aspects of the natural world to provide Pagans alternatives to the usual solar stories. It's still very much an alternative wheel, but there's a developing emphasis on what we can celebrate as the seasons turn. Faced with environmental crisis, and an uncertain future, celebration is a powerful soul restoring antidote that will help us all keep going, stay hopeful and dream up better ways of being.

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Celebrating the buds

At this time of year in my corner of the UK, the tree buds change in a noticeable way, and for me this is something to celebrate.

Trees form their leaf buds during the winter. The idea that trees sleep through the winter is a misconception perpetrated by the Pagan community, depending entirely on never looking that closely at trees. If you only ever see trees from a distance then yes, those apparently bare branches may look like nothing is going on, but this isn’t so! Trees make their leaves, and their catkins during the winter months. In January here, the catkins start opening. Somewhere around Imbolc, buds fatten discernibly.

What happens at this point is a browning at the edges, and over the coming weeks, whole areas of woodland will change colour, as the tips of twigs get browner with fattening buds. This is the first sign of this year’s leaf growth getting ready to unfurl. It is the life of trees continuing, and part of this season. The tree I’ve photographed for this blog has that browning effect going on in its upper branches.

New leaves on trees can seem like an event – a sudden arrival of bright new greenness to mark the beginning of the growing season. Nature isn’t as keen on events as we like to think. Nature is mostly about ongoing process. Sudden drama is often the consequence of a much slower, underlying process reaching a point.

 

Of course when buds fatten on trees will depend on what kind of trees you have, and where you live, what your local climate is like and so forth. The exact timing of natural events can vary greatly. It is important to know how things are where you live, how exactly your seasons manifest, and how the things living in your immediate area respond to the changing seasons. If you live in a place dominated by pines, there won’t be this leafing process, but there will be a brighter growth of fresh needles at some point, for example. 

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Nimue Brown is the author of Druidry and Meditation, Druidry and the Ancestors. Pagan Dreaming, When a Pagan Prays and Spirituality without Structure. She also writes the graphic novel series Hopeless Maine, and other speculative fiction. OBOD trained, but a tad feral, she is particularly interested in Bardic Druidry and green living.

Comments

  • Judith Shaw
    Judith Shaw Wednesday, 07 February 2018

    Wise words - "New leaves on trees can seem like an event – a sudden arrival of bright new greenness to mark the beginning of the growing season. Nature isn’t as keen on events as we like to think. Nature is mostly about ongoing process. Sudden drama is often the consequence of a much slower, underlying process reaching a point." This applies to our lives also I think (of course we are part of, enfolded within, nature). "Sudden success" is often the result of years and years of hard work without.

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