This is my favorite time of year to drive to work. Calgary is a city of hills, and as I’m about to drive down one towards the university I see the breathtaking tapestry of Fall colors covering the city as far as the eye can see. As I’ve mentioned before, Fall is my favorite season. Besides the start of a new school year, I have many fond memories in September and October of times spent at Winnipeg’s A Maze in Corn, a Vancouver Island pumpkin patch, trips to Uncle John’s Cider Mill when I lived in Michigan, and of course Halloween.
It’s a time of year that has always held significance to me. If you read this and are wondering why, that’s a great question. My Celtic roots? Classes and general reading about religion and mythology? How we as humans use the medium of story to try and make sense of the world around us? These are all parts of the answer, but so too are the hint of magic this time of year brings, and the things that can’t be explained away by science.
For centuries cultures and religions have marked the autumn as one where the veil between the worlds of the living and those who have passed is thinnest. The Greek myth centred around Persephone, the Gaelic observation of Samhain, Mexico's Dia de Muertos and Christianity's All Souls' Day are all versions of stories in the Fall months that explain the changing of the seasons and involve remembering and honouring the memories of loved ones.
As someone with a long lineage of both Irish and Scottish ancestors, the one I am most familiar with is the ancient festival of Samhain. One of its traditions centres around preparing a “feast” on October 31 that pays respects to ancestors and the realm of spirit. This was something I decided to start last year, and as I set the dinner table that night, I set a fourth place for a recently departed and very missed family member. A Samhain feast usually consists of root vegetables, herbs, apples and meats, all of which I cooked with that night.
On the note of root vegetables, the Fall is also a time of harvest – both a "real" harvest of the things we plant in our gardens, and of intentions/goals within our lives we’ve been working on. My work team recently had some illuminating conversations about the intentions and goals we’ve been working on, and so in today’s post I leave you with these questions:
- What intentions/goals did you “plant” earlier this year that you have been working on/seen bloom?
- What is something at this point in the year that you’ve decided to let go of?
Coming Up Next on the #WhatsYourSparkBlog
Tuesday, October 19: Continuing with this month’s theme of stories, I’m delighted to welcome local storyteller Onyx Shelton as next week’s guest blogger. Originally from Winnipeg, Onyx is a proud member of the Little Saskatchewan first nation, and a writer, screenwriter and musician. One of Onyx’s many passions in life is storytelling, and he has a particular love of writing in the genre of horror and ghost stories. In next week’s post, Onyx will be sharing one of his short stories just in time for the Halloween season.