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Root to rise – Imbolc 2025

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They have pollarded the trees in their garden. The house on the corner has five mature Birches lining their garden wall. Their silver skin is dull in early morning light, but the milky white scars left by the chainsaws glow like candles. The gaps between their limbs are filled with sawdust. It looks a little like cream or custard. The culling must have happened yesterday; we haven’t had much of a breeze.

My eyes draw upward to the air above them, where a reach of branches studded in buds would have stretched for the sky. I expect to feel sadness, but instead I sense a bubble of something delicate and expansive: hope. I imagine those trunks stretching with relief. Oh, to be so much lighter. They must feel twenty years younger!

And what looks like empty space is, when viewed from this angle, just potential. Waiting to be filled with new life, fresh shapes; an unknown canopy of possibility ready to be grown.

~

As I reach the final stile before the hill, a Barn Owl swoops into view just behind the bare bones of the Hawthorn tree. I freeze and watch, delighted, as it – surprisingly slowly – swings ever closer. Its moon-face twists down and round like a bottle cap. Its wingspan is far wider than its stumpy body would have me believe. It is utterly silent.

By some magic, it draws level with me, no more than five feet away. Then suddenly, this floating beauty slumps to the ground as if shot and there is a sound like a pillow striking skin. Owl has tucked its wings, compressing itself into a feathery W, to better wedge itself amongst the damp rushes and grasses. It could be a plastic bag, caught in the green, discarded. But beneath, I know, there are grasping feet and razor beak and a desperate mammalian scramble for survival. I hold my breath for seven long seconds. I admire the tea-stain markings spilled across Owl’s back. I wonder if I will see blood.

Then, the discarded pillow unfurls itself, expands, inflates in less than a second to take wing once more: empty-taloned. I imagine calm acceptance in its dark eyes. I think that is more for my benefit that its.

It curves away from me then, glides over the field and towards the boggy patch and the earth bank. I watch until the crescent slice of it sinks once more to ground, heavy, like a stone in a pond. I look away, and begin to climb, beyond satisfied with my gift.

~

I greet my Hawthorn friend but do not linger. What appears to be a decapitated foot is tucked under its canopy of naked branches. Three long, talon-like toes dangling from a twig-like leg. It is mottled, reptilian, could have belonged to a bird, once. It unnerves me, even as I stroke and admire the soft, butter-yellow lichens dressing most of the tree’s branches.

Instead, I sit a few feet away, leant against a smooth rock buried in the ground. It is cold and grounding under my denim-clad arse cheeks. It holds me steady. I scan the horizon, watch the misty, blue slopes of Derbyshire hills slide down to meet the scrappy mess of roofs and chimneys that make the edge of our village. Somewhere in between is a stripe of plantation pines, painted across the opposite side of the valley, still green and rich despite the time of year. But I can’t see it, because cloud is wrapped over the middle ground, grey and woolly, like the scarf huddled against my own throat.

Wind hushes past my ears in a pretence of silence. Then, two hollow cries echo across the valley, announcing that Buzzard has arrived. I soon spot two brown shapes, hovering over a field, a mere wing-span away from the nearest farmhouse. I imagine that they have just woken to the day; unlike their crepuscular cousin, Barn Owl, these day-flying carnivores are late-risers.

One Buzzard pulls away and begins to flap its broad wings, laboriously. I imagine the joints creaking and scraping, much as mine did when my alarm called me out of bed before 7am today. Is Buzzard giving itself a pep talk, I wonder, convincing itself to just make it to the next treetop it can have a break, a preen, and wait for the sun to warm the air a little more before attempting any of its usual aerobatics. I can almost hear the gust of its relieved sigh as it lands atop the silhouette of what could be a Larch around thirty feet away. Then I remember that birds have beaks, and wonder if a bird’s sigh sounds more like a whistle.

When I look again, Buzzard’s companion has joined it in the could-be-Larch. They are huddled close, cuddling perhaps, or conspiring more likely. I find myself warming with this image of togetherness and feel my own bones ache for the warmth of my partner. He is tucked up in bed, a fifteen minute walk away, and I suddenly wonder why I chose this cold arse over crawling back into bed with him this morning.

Then I remember Barn Owl. I remember how magical its solo flight was to see; how precious, how rare. And I remember that these solo moments are precious to me too. A rarity in the life of a busy wife, mother, human on this planet. There will be time for cuddles later. These moments are worth freezing for.

~

I say goodbye to Hawthorn. The birds, Buzzards and Owl alike, have disappeared from view, gone about their own business. It is time I attend to mine.

I want to walk home with dirt on my hands. Today is a festival day – Imbolc, the first stirrings of Spring – and for the first time in a long time I feel the urge to acknowledge it with more than just a mark on my calendar.

Imbolc is traditionally a fire festival, but for me it resonates more with the element of earth. This is the time of mud and puddles, damp bark and cold fingers. The stirring is not happening much overground yet, apart from those few determined snowdrops that brighten the corners of our new front garden. No, the real action is happening underground.

At this very moment, bulbs and seeds are wrapped in dark, wet earth, keeping warm from the frigid fingers of air, rain and snow. Into that dirty embrace they sink their roots, deep and strong. This they must do before they can even consider the world above.

A secret all bulbs and seeds know well is this: before you can bloom outward, you must first settle inward.

It’s a slow, dark and messy process and for most humans not comfortable at all. We like to focus on the light, the bright, the forward and onward and always progress. It is challenging then to slow down, to stop, to look backward, inward, below the surface thoughts and distractions and to prioritise staying put. To achieve nothing at all.

Imbolc challenges us to do just that. It is not a time to be making grand gestures or taking big action, but instead to get quiet, to listen to what is stirring underneath it all and to trust the earth to hold us in a space of ‘not yet’.

I find a freshly turned mole hill a little further along the path. In it, I plant talismans of gratitude, relief, past joys, past dreams, past loves. I smother them in the black, fluffy loam and press my palms against its darkness; feeling that which was dry and light become damp, sticky and heavy. Sealing my intention with the strength of the earth. Root in earth to rise anew, I pray. Let the loves and joys of my past feed whatever is ahead.

Then, I walk back down the path with dirt on my hands, cross the stile and focus not on my dreams of what I want, but on the sound of Canada Geese skeining overhead. It is not time, not yet.

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