Awakening Thoughts on Imbolc ~ Lá Fhéile Bríde.

Things have been quiet around here ~ we bedded down, hibernating, dozing, dreaming in our winter snuggery. We watched as storm after storm whirled around us, (Brian, Caroline, Dylan, Eleanor, Fionn ~ some we were more intimate with than others) wind and snow and rain, though not as much of the white stuff as we'd have liked. The children lamented as they saw every other part of the country slip into Narnia~esque dreamscapes, while we languished on the edge of our temperate, rainswept grey eastern coast, the glistening snow visible right there on the mountains, just within reach.

Winter Solstice fire on the beach.

Winter walks.

Languishing, quiet. Until now.

Until the persistent piping of our neighbour, a little Great Tit who makes their home each year in a nearby Silverbirch tree, breaks through the sloth and torpor that we have sunk into these last couple of months. Like a clarion call, it pierces our Winter atrophy, rouses us, stirring something deep within us, some recognition of unfathomable, subterranean Knowing that is all around us ~ Nature just getting on with it regardless what we humans get up to. At the same time my body relaxes its cold weather holding tension, there is a quickening in my blood.

Winter walks.

And I am reassured.

And so, we loosen our scarves just a little, sniff the cold air, breathing in that delicate hint of something moving in the air, our extrasensory ears divining the first trickle of sap rising beneath our feet.

Winter walks.

It is time for new beginnings, for dusting down and shaking out our hibernating nests, for waking what is sleeping in us. Like Mole, we suddenly long to scrabble our way up to the sunlight and roll in a warm meadow. And as the evenings stretch themselves, reaching their fingers towards that first glimmer of extra light, the warm meadows of summer beckon us and we too leap forwards in the simple joy of living and the delight of spring.

So here's to Imbolc, officially the first day of Spring here ~ Happy Brighid's Day to you all!

Tig an gheimhreadh dian dubh

Gearradh lena ghéire

Ach ar Lá ‘le Bríde

Gar dúinn Earrach Éireann.

The house of winter is very dark

Cutting with its sharpness

But on Brigid’s Day

Spring is near to Ireland.