“When I was a child…before I learned there were four seasons to a year, I thought there were dozens: the time of night-time thunderstorms, heat lightning time, bonfires-in-the-woods time, blood-on-the-snow time, the times of ice trees, bowing trees, crying trees, shimmering trees, bearded trees, waving-at-the-tops-only trees, and trees-drop-their-babies time. I loved the seasons of diamond snow, steaming snow, squeaking snow, and even dirty snow and stone snow, for these meant the time of flower blossoms on the river was coming.
These seasons were like important and holy visitors and each sent its harbingers: pine cones open, pine cones closed, the smell of leaf rot, the smell of rain coming, crackling hair, lank hair, bushy hair, doors loose, doors tight, doors that won’t shut at all, windowpanes covered with ice-hair, windowpanes covered with wet petals, windowpanes covered with yellow pollen, window panes pecked with sap gum. And our own skin had its cycles too: parched, sweaty, gritty, sunburned, soft.
…Once, we lived by these cycles and seasons year after year, and they lived in us.
…They were part of our soul-skins–a pelt that enveloped us and the wild and natural world–at least until we were told that there really were only four seasons to a year…
~Clarissa Pinkola Estés
But we cannot allow ourselves to sleepwalk wrapped in this flimsy and unobservant fabrication… and therefore to suffer from dryness, tiredness, and homesickness. It is far better for us to return to our own unique and soulful cycles regularly, all of them, any of them.”