A Reflection: Coming Home to Nature's Seasons

The Sangre de Cristo Mountains (Spanish translates to Blood of Christ) —are just behind our home. This mountain range is the southernmost subrange of the Rocky Mountains. They run from southern Colorado to northern New Mexico. I hike or ride a horse in them most days, and when there isn’t snow on the ground the earth is a blood red color.

At 57 years old, I feel like I’ve returned to the child-like awe of the beauty and rhythms of nature. It brings me back to my Kansas childhood memories of seasonal change. I never knew how much I missed the four distinct seasons until I lived away from them for a long time. Santa Fe is now where we call home and I feel we came back to the magic of living within the seasons.

Stages of Life

What if seasons represent the stages of our life from birth to death? If, Spring represents new birth while Summer represents carefree youth, Autumn grounded adulthood and Winter old age and death. And, as we embrace the change each quarter of the year brings us, we have the opportunity to focus our awareness on life’s sweetness and fragility and begin again with each season.

Coming Home to Nature

What if coming home to nature allows us to be more human, to see the magic and the diversity of the natural rhythms of the world. To weave our soul back into every day life, reconnect to our divinity—our humanness. I hold the strong belief that our soul is connected to everything.

As we spend more time in nature, we can learn to feel that connection. To embrace the change; warm summer days, freezing winter nights, sunshine, clouds, snow, drought— we act on nature’s instincts and find our way home, to ourselves and to others.

AFFIRM: I connect to nature’s season and I find my way home.