Sinking into Seasonal Rituals
- Bri
- Dec 4, 2024
- 4 min read
Listening to on repeat:
This morning I opted for a heavier scent in my diffuser - rosemary, tobacco, and birch essential oils wafted through the air as my pencil danced in the deep shadows of my happy light, filling the pages of my journal. Mornings always feel sacred to me. It's a quiet time that soothes my soul. It’s a time when anything is possible.
Rituals, sacred moments, marking the passing of time, taking note. It’s incredibly important to honor the gift of this "...one wild and precious life”. So important, that I long ago decided to stop pretending to value the traditions that were handed down to me, yet contain no particular significance or gravity in my own life.
Thanksgiving makes me uncomfortable. When I was a kid, it was just one more overly-gendered holidays that my relatives celebrated with big gatherings; women cooked while men watched mens’ sports on TV. To this day, if you identified all of the ‘man’ traits that my relatives value (home construction, bread winning, wilderness survival, stoicism, etc), my score card would tally higher than all of my male relatives. That said, our country doesn’t value women sports (or, really, women) enough to understand that there are little girls that weren’t born to be in the kitchen. It never mattered who I was on these holidays - it mattered that I was a little girl who didn’t know her place. From the lens of my chosen adult values, it’s also a “holiday” celebrated on stolen land by over-indulgence of slaughtered animals.
For the past few months, I've walked through my life, actively naming my rituals. I’ve spent decades simply shunning tradition, rather than holding reverence for my chosen traditions. I've been trying to walk that back. There are little rituals, like how, each morning, I hold space for the possibility of a new day. In the summer, I am often out the door before the sun is up to assure Huck is able to join in on my daily run before the heat of the day chases him off trail. In the summers, this run time with my 4-legged bff is sacred. When I bring Huck on a run, it’s his run - not mine. This means we stop to play fetch when he finds a good offering - it means I feed him treats for all of his good decisions - it means we value the time we have in his active life. Winters are a different story and my mornings are spent as described above: scented oils; internal clock-setting; writing, reading, and stillness.
Seasonally, my cadence for life also shifts, bringing different rituals. My pace slows and I find myself craving creation as I sink into my carefully curated home. Slowly, I sift through photos from the year, taking joy in the editing process before printing my favorites at artifact uprising. If I had a particularly impactful BIG life event, I’ll print a large format image and purchase a new frame from Ray and Karen. If a thru hike is on the horizon for the upcoming year, I start to make big vats of food to dehydrate. This is also the season that I pick my sewing machine up more consistently for more complex projects.
The quilted jacket (#WikstenUnfoldingJacket pattern) in this image is a piece that I spent three winters working on. It took me one winter to remove the vintage quilt front from its decimated backing, cut approximate pattern pieces, and re-quilt those pieces with new batting & backing. The second winter I sewed the pieces together, only to be unhappy with the fit. This year, I ripped it apart to tailor the fit, flip the collar, and add the edge trim. The pants have been on my sew list all summer after I fell in love with Matteau’s fisherman pants (Sew House 7 #nehalempants, Merchant Mills Japanese Slub Cotton fabric) Finishing these pieces over my long holiday weekend was immensely gratifying.
Home projects don’t come as naturally to me in the winter when I find that, like the sun, I’m slower to start and quicker to fade. This is the space where I walk the line of gently forcing myself to make progress on the projects that I know I won’t have time for come summer. This winter I am building a dog shower in the laundry room as I finish those walls. More to come on that project when it's at a more sharable state.
As for the big crowning winter events that I adore, if I have a work crew in Bend, I have carried on the Epic tradition of a sunset snowshoe hike out to one of our trail huts to pack in food and drinks to celebrate the season as the moon rises. Ryan and I also occasionally host a Solstice Party. We ask friends to bring whatever they have energy for on the given year - this can simply mean bringing themselves but some friends rise to the occasion to try new vegan recipes. This my favorite part: knowing that friends will genuinely bring the offering they they are capable of supporting… but also, that some of our friends honor our chosen diet enough to spend a meal considering options that don't alter animal lives.
This path of reimagining tradition and rituals around new ideas and values has been a long journey for the little girl who didn't "know her place". It's taken decades of noticing belonging and joy when they found their way to me to understand how to hold that space for others when I have capacity. And, this? This is the simple life that I am proud of.