Spring Ritual Writing

Or drawing, or dancing, whatever comes through!

While it’s not quite Spring yet, it’s certainly feeling like it on the Central Coast. Our peach tree is budding (only on one side, strangely), the citrus is fading from the trees as the nettles & cleavers take over the creekside hills, and the days are growing with the heat of the sun. SLO itself is expecting a heat wave this week, with highs in the upper 80s, and it’s making me grateful for our coastal perch.

The changing of the seasons every year reminds me not only of the Earth’s subtle spinning through space, but of the not-so-subtle shifts of our climate. While we’ve had plenty of rain for our rainy season, heatwaves such as this one that’s pending feel even more unwelcome by the time the green grasses fade to gold & the air hangs dry in that mid-Summer slog. While our coastal town becomes a fog haven in that time, I’m reminded each time I drive to SLO (particularly, the farm, as it’s readily exposed to the elements day in, day out) of the necessary adaptations we must forge and wander amidst climate chaos.

Rooting into the rhythms and well-worn traditions of the changing seasons is a welcome balm. Soothing like calendula, or aloe vera, on steeping, frothing day. With blue skies above, birds singing to the morning quiet, and the faint sound of the ocean bellowing back from the horizon, I’m crafting this first (of four) iterations of Spring Ritual Writing. As always with these ‘writing prompts’, you’re welcome (and encouraged) to be with them in any capacity. I’ll share what came through for me, and you can sit with that, or dip into your own creative rhythms in any and all mediums.

I’ll invite you to enjoy these Sunday (or Monday, we’ll see when each lands in your inbox) offerings as a means of deepening kinship to yourself. Allowing yourself a moment to engage with art, poetry, and sensing without expectation or judgement. Letting the essence of the season bubble up in you like sap in a tree, water in spring — rising without effort, with the Earth’s call the only true summoning, and with the pace, the output varying by the day, the hour, the second.

•••

Here is our first poem —

Praising the Spring by Linda Gregg

•••

And, prompt —

Write (or draw, paint) of a night where you cannot sleep for the heat of the day lingers.

•••

And, my response to the above prompt —

Sun of my days drifted through an open window gaze, straying from their home, they opt to stay.

Bed linens refreshed, gingham, sky blue, tepid as the riverways from home.

I wander the night in stillness, dampened by the day, and shove a window open in my singular waking.

I cannot fall back for the fault line seems to tremor.

The birds and their songs unfurling just before dawn.

They, too, stirred awake by the simmering night.

With my symphony on the outside, I shutter what curls up in the inner rivers, flush them out with what the rains had to give us before Winter’s fading.

There are moonlit nights, and then there is this one. There are hummingbirds louder than the sea as they seek what’s for the taking when the hands and open throats are here, wandering the night in their tepid linens.

The coyotes on the dunes, I hear their pacing. The rattlesnakes still well-warmed by the day, take up their space. There are the gophers, and widows, coming out from their hiding. Blanketed by a new moon night, praying the day away, for these darkened hours are heated enough.

•••

To close, a gallery of recent images from Northern & Central California days. Grateful to be here, with the land, with family, friends, & kin of all sorts.

Blessings,

Caroline