Perhaps the heart of my work as a shaman is my deep connection to the natural world and rhythm of the seasons. There’s also my work with the spirits, especially The Dead. Isn’t Death, after all, a season of Life?
My mother, having once experienced sunstroke as a girl, was always sensitive to heat. When my dad retired from his career as a State Park Superintendent, they bought an old farmhouse up in Ashe County and moved to the mountains. There, she adapted well to the snowdrifts and keening winds of their homestead at the foot of Three Top Mountain. “It’s a fair trade,” she said, “for the comfort of cool and breezy summers.”
Her sensitivity to heat meant that if I wanted to see her over the summer, I had to make the drive up NC 16 out of the stifling haze that blanketed the Piedmont. But my own children were young and traveling with them in summer always challenging. “I’ll come visit once it cools off,” Mom promised, and she would. So, when I found the first red autumn leaf, I’d tuck it into a note or card and mail it to her as a sort of promissory note for the changing season, a message understood between us: See, Mom – Autumn is coming! Make plans to come down for a visit.
I did this for over twenty years, until early red leaves came to symbolize her presence, even after she was gone. Years after her death, the family gathered in early June on the wide, sunny lawn of the house we’d once lived in to honor my father’s passing. We passed the box with his ashes from person to person around the circle and told tales, sprinkling his mortal remains on the land he’d cared for so diligently. As I stood, awaiting my turn, a single red leaf drifted lazily out of the clear blue sky to land at my feet. I glanced around, seeing nothing but the green foliage of pines and oaks and hickories. There was no wind – where had the leaf come from? I could only conclude my mother had given us a sign of her presence.
Now, when I encounter a bright red leaf out of season, I place it on my Ancestor altar and pour a cup of coffee for my mother’s Shade. Then I sit with her at my round oak table and speak to her of my world and drink memories.
Autumn is Coming
I know that autumn is coming when the blackbirds arrive:
Small dark bodies rustling and creaking in the treetops,
Their sound a symphony of rusty gates.
I know that autumn is coming when the Joe Pye Weed
Bows heavily beneath the dance of butterfly feet
And tattered confetti wings.
I know that autumn is coming when I can open the windows
And lie down to the sweet night symphony
Of the owls calling, calling.
I know that autumn is coming when the sourwoods
Drop their first maroon and scarlet leaves in promise
Of cooler nights and days ahead.
I know that autumn is coming when my heart grows restless
And I gaze westward, toward undulating hills,
Longing for a dear, familiar face.
Susannah Ravenswing 2020