Photo by Sarah McManiman on Flikr.
Autumn is my favourite season. As the trees change colour and lose their leaves I’m reminded how well nature knows when it’s time to slow down. Meanwhile, back in the realms of human worldliness and against the backdrop of the countryside’s rapid decceleration, our town is preparing for Carnival Night. I acknowledge that it’s a form of community spirit – a much needed commodity – that creates these kinds of celebrations and fun events. At the same time, my heart sinks at the blatant waste of precious energy and other resources andthe noise, light and air pollution generated. At the risk of sounding like a puritanical kill-joy, I will be staying in tonight.
Planning to ‘stay in’ is actually an important part of autumn for me. If I really want to live in alignment with nature’s rhythms and reap the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual benefits of that, then you might say that a first step would be to acknowledge that nature doesn’t call on us to just keep going at the same rate of knots all year round. It ebbs and flows and so must I. Autumn’s flow is inwards and downwards. I feel drawn to store food, to wrap up warm, to hunker down and prepare for colder, windier, wilder weather. It also feels like a sacred time more conducive to contemplation and quiet inner work. In the garden, I want to tidy up and tie down, to cover tender late season growth to see it through the winter and to clean pots. There’s a sense of anticipation of complete stillness. In the house, the thermal curtain liners are up, logs are stored, chutneys and jams are made and the freezer is full.
Last winter here in the UK we experienced record breaking low temperatures and snow falls. It felt like a shock and quite an inconvenient truth that ‘normal life’ ground to an abrupt halt. Events were cancelled, shop shelves quickly emptied and a deathly hush descended on a usually bustling city. Once we had reluctantly adjusted to the disruptions, though, the peacefulness was a revelation! With no cars on the roads, people donned their boots and walked… and talked with each other…even those we’d never met before…and helped each other clear paths and fetch food. What if ‘normal life’ were more like this?
According to a local retailer I was talking with yesterday, Carnival Night is the start of the Christmas season for him. The jollity and the hard work begin here. For some High Street retailers this year in our town, if they don’t do well this Christmas, then they will be looking at closure in the New Year, such is the state of the local economy. No hibernation for them, unless enforced through loss of earnings, of course. With fuel and food poverty on the increase and illness rates highest at this time of year, others will face some form of hibernation, like hedgehogs, in order to survive the harsher weather.
Unless we humans elect to live within nature’s rhythms, then hibernation, in the form of unwelcome solitary confinement, will become more widespread. In contrast, when we choose to slow down as the seasons do, to pull in our horns, to reduce and localise our activity and consumption during the autumn and winter then our lives overall will become more sustainable. Our voluntary hibernation will become part of a more natural, restorative process. We will then have the energy and resources to meet the Spring with the renewed vigour she deserves.
This site seeks to explore the heart and soul of downshifting to a more sustainable, ethical and holistic way of living and working, in keeping with the needs of the planet, humanity as a whole and ourselves as individuals. 
Lovely post. I too love autumn the best as seasons go. All the wonderful colours. The excuse to draw the curtains early and curl up. To have bowls of homemade soup (I went on a bit of soup making frenzy the other week, largely owing to a large pumpkin. There are now about 20 containers of soup in my freezer!). I figure if I’ve been reincarnated I was probably a bear in a former life.
Alison – Ah yes, soup! Such an easy, warming and delicious meal.
I loved this.I often struggle to see the beauty of winter as I am very much a summer lover, however this may help me see it in a new light and feel more positively about dark evenings and harsh weather!
Sarah – Sometimes I struggle with it too.I was feeling a bit like that the other night when there was something I needed from the shed after dark and so ventured out into the garden in the pitch black. It was a time of day when I’d rather be sitting very close to the woodburner and there was a frost forming outside. I complained about the cold to a friend who was with me and she said: ‘Yes, but look at the sky!’ – perfectly clear, starlit sky – amazing!