The Wisdom of Harvest-Gathering

This blog beautifully captures the essence of seasonal shifts and community gatherings. Watching the swallows migrate, the author reflects on natural rhythms and introduces themes of connection for an upcoming Medicine Walk. Readers are invited to embrace mindful engagement, questioning streamlined communication that often leads to disconnection. As the community gathers, readers are encouraged to consider their own harvests—what they’ve grown, gathered, and what to keep or let go.

I love watching the swallows at this time of year, they seem to take on an urgency as they fatten up for their journey south, becoming more playful and feisty with the clicking sounds they make to each other. I feel the deep intensity of a conversation that I can’t quite hear or understand. I wrote earlier about the lone tern, and then a week or so later ,5 more joined him and I could feel the turn of the wheel.

Earlier, as I was heading South to run the first foraging group of the year, this felt like the theme … the groups gather to gather the harvest …And now, I am gathering you all … to remind you and prepare you for our first Medicine Walk as a community. I hope that you are able to find some space to join us this coming week.

Please do comment below. In time I may shift this into an easier to use format. Though I also feel that part of us moving into a new paradigm is to question the apparent ‘ease’ of the old one. I feel it is one that fed our insecurities and encouraged us not to engage with each other by streamlining communications to such an extent that it encouraged a lack of mindfulness - and an expectation of automatum that forgot about the humans present. So it may be a bit clunky, but I would like to ask you to lean into that resistance ( if any) a bit and find out what may beneath it. Join me in embracing doing things differently, bit by little bit, step by step. Thank you.

Back to gathering as a theme … as we gather the first harvests and prepare for the coming ones, there is much to be reflected on. What seeds of intentions did you sow ? Have they come into fruition the way you expected ? What do you intend to do with the harvest that you are now receiving ? As you gather reflect on what you may keep and you may discard … without acting on it yet - for new insights still may come into view.

The photograph is of the offering my Italian friend, Serena, gave me when I was leaving. It was bound in a red thread for sisterhood and contains three varieties of pre-Roman wheat that she grows - and inspired the wee poem I wrote which is below. 

Bealtaine to Lughnasadh

Flower to Fruit

Green to Grain

Journey 

Reflections 

Seeding

with much Love
from my Heart to yours,

​~ Tania Aurora White Crow ~