Nature at Samhain

Some twenty years ago I spent a lot of time thinking about the relationship between modern Druid festivals and the wheel of the year as it turns where I live. The solstices and equinoxes make total sense because of their relationship with the length of the day and night and all the impact that has on the rest of nature.

Imbolc is traditionally associated with sheep lactating and with snowdrops. Lammas (which is at the same time as Lugnasadh) is associated with the first of the grain harvests. While lambs don’t reliably appear in the fields this early, we have some obvious markers for these two festivals. Gathering May blossom is traditionally associated with Beltain, and it’s also the time of year when bluebells come out, and when it’s warm enough to be barefoot outside (or to have sex outside, but barefoot is probably more inclusive!). 

I spent a long time considering Samhain. The pumpkin harvest may seem obvious, but pumpkins are from the Americas and not part of UK tradition. If you’re growing them, it may well make sense to take them as a key seasonal marker. Twenty years ago is struck me that the leaves are usually down from the trees by Samhain.

Climate change is impacting on the wheel of the year. How we relate festivals to seasons may need serious consideration in light of this. Do we stay with the ancestral dates? Or do we adapt based on what those dates mean to us? I suspect the answers will be individual. For many people around the world, those ‘Celtic’ dates have never related much to a lived experience of the local seasons anyway.

It is Halloween. Most of the trees in my area still have all their leaves. Many are barely beginning to turn yellow, and there’s a lot of greenery present. There is no sense of the dying year, not yet. It’s still warm enough to be outside without a coat during the day. Grazing animals are still out in the fields. If your focus for Halloween is the idea of bringing animals in and choosing which ones will live, then we aren’t at that point in the year yet, either.

Urban Forests

There are plans to circle Madrid with a massive forest. Surrounding the city with trees would help fight climate chaos, and would have a cooling effect – cities are normally heat islands. It’s an excellent plan with the potential to help on many levels. I feel strongly that urban tree planting should be a serious consideration worldwide.

Planting trees in urban spaces means we aren’t taking farmland out of production and we aren’t messing up existing ecosystems. Unconsidered tree planting isn’t usually a good thing. For tree planting to be effective they have to survive. Turning otherwise barren urban spaces green by planting trees is a good choice environmentally.

Urban trees provide wildlife corridors. They create shade, which can reduce human energy use. Trees help with noise and air pollution, they help slow falling rain and reduce flooding. Meanwhile, they take up carbon from the air. We also know that trees improve people – we have better mental health when we have green spaces, we’re less likely to commit crimes or to be violent.

If people have to travel to access green space for relaxation, exercise and mental health, that travelling puts more pressure on the planet. If we can turn our cities green, or put greenbelts around them – especially if we can re-purpose derelict industrial sites when we do that – we can cut the need for travel, which will also help.

When it comes to wild and natural forests, there is much to be said for allowing natural regeneration and expansion where possible. But, in urban spaces we have nothing to lose and almost anything we do to introduce more plant matter is likely to bring benefits. 

Imagine that fifteen minute city where you mostly walk or cycle, or use electronic mobility devices, and you do so surrounded by trees. Instead of the massive amount of land given over to parking spaces, we could have so many pockets of life and vitality, we could add so much beauty to our lives and we could fight climate change while we do it.

Green hearts show the love

Every year in February, the Climate Coalition runs an online campaign called Show The Love which is about creating a voice for change. Green hearts feature heavily, and it’s a chance to talk about what we love, and what we want to protect. I’ve been involved with this for some years now, in a small way.

I like soft campaigning. While there’s most assuredly a place for harder hitting stuff, I don’t have the emotional resilience to do it. I’m better deployed on awareness raising  and trying to draw people in. My contributions to fighting climate change are made in my personal life and in trying to engage and enthuse other people in gentle ways.

This year I am drawing green hearts and using them to talk about things I want to protect.

If you’d like to get involved, visit https://www.theclimatecoalition.org/show-the-love

Lifting each other

We live in strange and challenging times, full of uncertainty and reasons for fear. It can be difficult to know what to do in face of such enormous challenges. My advice is, think small. It’s perhaps more obvious to think that you, personally should be doing something dramatic. To feel that you personally should be sorting out climate change, or fixing your country’s political system, or ending the pandemic or saving the rainforests… And, unable to see what you can even do on that scale, you may end up paralysed and doing very little.

Think small. Ask yourself what you can do today that might make the day a bit better for someone else. Maybe it’s a cat photo on Facebook. Maybe it’s amplifying a cause on Twitter. There is undoubtedly someone you can help in some small way. Do it. Do it every chance you get and use that focus to make sure you don’t end up overwhelmed, frozen and unable to do anything at all.

Ask how we might lift each other. Look for the projects, the activities and the opportunities that lift more people, create support or visibility, do something to make change. Again, you do not have to be engaging with a global crisis directly for this to be worth doing. Look for local projects that help people in your area. Look for local environmental and sustainability projects. Often there’s overlap – the project getting kids on bicycles will help with social issues and environmental issues at the same time. These things are all related, social justice and environmental care go together so start where you can and trust that it will help with wider issues too.

It is so easy to be pinned down by fear. It is so desperately easy to be persuaded of your own powerlessness. However, if everyone got stuck in and did whatever small things they could do, we would see rapid change. We can make significant cultural shifts out of people being kinder to each other – just that alone would do a tremendous amount of good and help push our societies in better directions. Think small, it can be a powerful, radical ambitious choice that gets a lot done.

Seasonally out of kilter

I’ve had a few periods in my life where, despite my best efforts I’ve not felt connected to the season. Getting outside and being with wild things under an open sky is a longstanding part of how I do my Druidry. Health permitting, I walk every day – there have been times when poor health has been the reason for my disconnection. Usually, that time outside allows me to engage with what’s happening. I see the changes in plants, insects, creatures, I see what the trees are doing, I experience the temperature and weather conditions and I am properly inside each season as it unfolds.

Currently I’m out of kilter. Part of this is me. I spent September frozen. I walked regularly, but I wasn’t feeling anything much and even though I made the effort to try and connect, I was doing so from inside a glacier, emotionally speaking. I’ve had this sort of thing happen before and the only answer is patience and persistence. Depression can leave me so numb that I don’t feel anything of what’s going on around me and I lose my sense of joy in the wild things. These frozen times pass. I think I’m experiencing a thaw at the moment.

However, as my emotional state thaws, I’m still finding myself out of kilter with the season. This is because the season is out of kilter. It’s mid October, and many of the trees haven’t even started to change their leaf colour. It wasn’t so long ago that leaf colour went autumnal reliably in September and you could expect the leaves to be down by Samhain in this part of the world.

A few days ago I saw my first catkins. I’ve never seen hazel catkins on a tree this early before, and I’ve never seen them on a tree that also had green leaves on it before. I have no idea what that tree is doing. Maybe the tree doesn’t know either.

This is climate chaos in action. Calling it climate change suggests a process with some coherence to it. That would be more feasible for living things to adapt to. What we have is chaos. Unpredictable, unseasonal temperatures. Storms. Hot days in the normally cold part of the year, and back in the summer, really cold days. I’m out of kilter, but in some ways that means I am more in harmony with what’s going on than I would be if I clung to the idea of what this time of year is supposed to be like. I don’t enjoy it, but I know how important it is to engage with what’s happening, not what we think should be happening.

The Emergency Tree Plan

The Emergency Tree Plan is The Woodland Trust’s plan to increase tree cover across the UK and tackle the climate and nature crises. The Committee on Climate Change states that the UK needs 1.5 million hectares of additional woodland by 2050 to help hit the net zero carbon emissions target.

Trees and woods can help to fight climate change by storing carbon, keeping it locked up for centuries. The trouble with seeing trees as a ‘magic bullet’ for climate change is of course that we could end up with something fairly sterile designed to benefit humans, but no good to wildlife, nature, ecosystems or the complex wellbeing of life itself. This plan doesn’t simply see trees as a commodity for human benefit, but is about integrating climate action with nature recovery.

Happily, the first priority expressed in this plan is to protect and expand existing woodland. Without a doubt, saving existing trees and helping woods naturally regenerate are the most useful things we can do. But, that won’t work everywhere.

I think there’s a great deal of good to be done here with urban tree planting. How many ‘parks’ are little more than big empty areas of grass? Good perhaps for the odd football game, but utterly boring and featureless the rest of the time. Not only would more trees help store carbon, but they would enrich such urban spaces with beauty and interest, and create urban habitats for wildlife.

The plan varies depending on which country you are in within the UK – here are the links.

Wales http://www.woodlandtru.st/jBtws

Northern Ireland http://www.woodlandtru.st/H2D33

England http://www.woodlandtru.st/dUfva

Scotland http://www.woodlandtru.st/qvqKE

 

The Big Climate Fightback

It is not enough to put less carbon into the atmosphere. We have to take carbon out. There are a number of ways of doing this and none of the solutions are about technology. We need to restore peatbogs and proper grassland where those are the natural habitats for an area. Both store carbon. For everything else, there’s trees.

We need to put back hedges and copses. We need to extend existing woodlands and plant new ones. We need trees in urban spaces. Any scrappy bit of unloved grass needs trees on it as a matter of some urgency. Establishing woodlands is a complicated business and doing it well requires knowledge of both trees and the land you are working with. When it comes to urban tree planting, there’s not a lot you can get wrong. More trees are good, and any space where a tree can thrive it’s worth putting trees in. Trees in urban spaces don’t just suck up carbon – they keep us cool which in turn will reduce our energy needs and help us cut carbon.

If you want to take action to help fight climate change and protect life on Earth, plant a tree. If you own land – even a small garden – think about what you can grow in it. A miniature fruit tree is always worth a thought. A small tree is so much better than no tree.

If you can’t plant trees yourself, see who can and support them. See what your local nature groups are doing, and what your local council may be up for. If you’ve got a local Transition Network, talk to them about it. Perhaps your local school, or hospital, or community centre has some space where trees could be planted? And again, trees in such places do so much good above and beyond their ability to take up carbon.

I’m not in a position to plant trees – I have no space of my own where I could do that. I’m going to give money to a local charity who are planning to plant trees as soon as they’ve secured land. They’re an excellent charity and I first met them planting trees on the side of the road. They’ve also got some plans afoot to plant shrubs and wildflowers – it’s all good.

If you want to take positive action quickly to help make a difference, plant trees. Give money to groups who are planting trees. Ask your local council to plant trees.

You may also want to get involved with this project from The Woodland Trust – a scheme to get a million people each planting a tree on the 30^th of November.

http://www.woodlandtru.st/3ajtf

Relating to the rain

How we relate to the rain tells us a lot about our relationships with the natural world. For the person to whom rain is simply an inconvenience, or a blight on those ‘nice summer days’ there’s a disconnection with the rest of life. Rain is essential for plants and for all wild creatures. What we too often call a nice summer is often in practice, a drought.

Rain can be a massive inconvenience if, like most of our ancestors, you dry your laundry outside. Long wet patches can cause all kinds of difficulties. However, air drying the laundry saves energy and means you don’t have to own as many white goods. So even as you’re feeling challenged by the rain, you have a relationship with it that is more involved.

Rain can be a real inconvenience if you walk or cycle for transport. Getting wet and cold isn’t always a good option. In summer, the rain can prove refreshing and pleasant and be nicer than walking on a hot, dry day.

Of course heavy rain isn’t usually a blessing. It washes away soil, batters plants and makes life difficult for many creatures. Many insects struggle with very wet conditions, owls can’t hunt so readily, everything gets soaked and younger and more delicate creatures won’t necessarily survive a prolonged period of downpour. The more damaged a landscape is, the more vulnerable it is to heavy rain causing massive problems.

If you have a more involved relationship with the natural world, you’ll notice when the rain is needed, and when there’s been too much for the life around you. You’ll notice different kinds of rain – from the soft showers that soak easily into the soil to the dramatic downpours that have destructive power. You’ll know whether rain comes as a relief or a threat.

The desire to control, or avoid weather is part of how we’ve got into this mess. We’ll have worse weather to deal with as a consequence of climate change. We can choose to push back harder – driving more, building more, trying to control the water even as it becomes more uncontrollable. Or we can learn to live with it, respect it, and act in ways that reduce our impact. The harder we try to control the presence of water in our lives, the less control we are likely to have over it.

Druidry, language, the good and the bad

How we label things has a great deal of power. What do we name as desirable, attractive, appealing? What do we tell ourselves is rubbish, useless, second rate? That winter holiday in the sun is generally framed as ‘good’ along with long dry spells in summer. What would happen if we stopped calling long sunny spells ‘beautiful’ and started calling them ‘droughts’?

In the context of climate change, how we talk about the weather is ever more important. Firstly because we are causing weather extremes, and secondly because how we respond to those, can add to the problem. Jetting off in search of winter sun is a case in point here. I grant you, it’s no fun being cold, but if you can afford to fly, you can probably afford fluffy socks and sufficient heating.

Air conditioning with its hydrofluorocarbons and electricity use is a response to hot weather that adds to the climate change fuelling the hot weather. No one enjoys being hot but the question of when to start using energy to cool down, and how much energy to use is an important one.

Extreme heat and cold both kill people, and other living beings too. If we’re increasing the problem when we try to improve our own comfort, we really aren’t winning here.

To be a Druid means, in part to be in service to the land and the wild world. How exactly you phrase that and express it will vary, but this is nature based religion and we have a duty of care to the natural world. It’s also at this point a matter of enlightened self interest – if it was your personal home that could easily end up either on fire, or frozen, you would act to avoid that.

One of the ways in which Druidry, and Paganism as a whole is well placed to help people rethink climate change responses, is through the language of cycles. Accepting the wheel of the year, the seasons and the natural changes in weather makes us better able to live with them. If you are honouring the seasons, it gives you a better basis for working with how things are. Rather than seeing good and bad weather, we can just see weather and look for appropriate responses. We can reframe good weather as weather we can live with, and bad weather as extreme weather that can kill us. If we talk about the dramatic weather climate change is causing, that alone helps. So many people are still in denial about both our role in this and our power to change it.

It’s worth exploring how you talk about climate, and where you describe things as good or bad, problematic or desirable. It’s well worth looking at how our feelings about the weather then translate into our choices about technology we use, and carbon we release into the atmosphere.

Signs of spring

Where I live, there have been many signs of spring during the last week. It would be normal to see celandines, catkins and snowdrops by this time in any year. Some of the fruit trees blossoming don’t seem too early either, but I’m seeing other signs of spring that I wouldn’t normally expect before March, and sometimes later.

There are leaves unfurling. I found a hawthorn tree with quite a lot of leaves on it. Willows are starting to come out and other plants as well. These are early.

The cleavers are up – again, late February doesn’t seem like quite the right time for this, but here they are. The garlic is also starting to show leaf tips emerging. That’s very early.

Yesterday I went walking and at several points was down to bare arms because I was too hot. On this occasion, my bare skin cannot be ascribed to a hot flush. It was warm enough that Tom took off his jumper. Tom is the sort of person to wear three layers of jumpers in the winter. He definitely isn’t having hot flushes.

This, I suppose, is one of the kinder faces climate change can wear. Being warm and enjoying the sunlight is so nice, that it is easy to overlook what’s causing it. A bit warmer in February is pleasant. A bit warmer in July – as with last July, can be overwhelming and lethal.

We had a frost overnight. That’s considerably more normal than warm sun and bare arms.

We all know there’s a climate crisis. And yet, all around me I see people carrying on absolutely as normal. The roads are chocked with cars at busy times. Perhaps everyone is waiting for someone else to sort it out.