Our Dark Soil Centers

Late summer is blessedly complex. Black-eyed susans, sunflowers, and goldenrod are still in full-on buttery radiance, while the leaves on some trees are yellowing as they get ready to fall to the ground. Somehow the energies of the earth are persistently, devotedly generous, while they are also beginning to move through various states of decline. 

It could be argued that it is one of the most challenging transitions of the entire seasonal wheel. We are in the borderlands. Late summer colds surprise us. A subtle nostalgia and early fall depression may set in. A bittersweet awareness of things coming to an end seems to rise with the low-light dawns and the dried plant-bodies in the garden. Luckily there is a certain kinship here, an experience shared by all things.

We are in the later stages of the Earth element season and the beginning of everything falling down. We are no longer flowers blossoming towards the sky, we are no longer in the floaty realms of peak summer but instead we are really feeling our feet on the earth. This is an element of substance, form, and feeling into the solid weight of our beingness. Themes arise related to harvesting, gathering, and digestion, all the while we are drawn deeper into our flesh, our embodiment, our dark soil centers. Hunger, pluck, chew, savor, swallow, ripen, rot, compost down in one long interconnected pathway meant to fill us with life force.