The passing of summer

Apothecary News: The Summer of Love Boxes are out! We’ve got so many delicious seasonal herbal treats in this one to indulge yourself or share with loved ones.

the most delicious mocktail with the Love Charm Cordial and sparkling water

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The sensations of summer are heady and all-consuming. The musky sweetness of blooming elderflowers, the velvety soft texture of mullein leaves, the low sensual buzzing of bees is enough to intoxicate the mind and body. When the stark ruggedness of winter swallows six months of the year, these days feel like magic.

But underneath it all, there is also a sense of the rapid passing of time. Some days it feels like the minute I lay my head on the pillow, I’m already getting ready for bed the following day. And all of a sudden, here we are in the middle of July. The season is beautiful, but sometimes it still feels like it slips through the fingers too quickly.

Sitting in these thoughts, I began watching a documentary about walking the Camino de Santiago, an ancient trail that traverses the length of Spain. The trail takes about five weeks to walk, and has become a spiritual pilgrimage for many people (it’s also on my own bucket list).

In this documentary, one of the pilgrims that was interviewed changed my entire perspective on the passing of summer. He said that when we fill our time with busy work, the months feel short. But when we fill our time with people, experiences, and purpose, the months become long.

swallowtail and oak

Of course we know that time is relative, but it wasn’t until I heard him explain it in these simple terms that something clicked. It’s not about how we measure time, but how we fill it that determines its length.

Many days I spend just moving from task to task, trying to keep up. I realized I haven’t been intentional with my time. Even though I am obsessed with what I do and I love every bit of it, I wasn’t prioritizing many things outside of it. So I began making plans that centered around people, experiences and purpose.

The first thing I did was add things to my planner, because if it’s not scheduled it’s probably not happening. I planned a mix of regular activities and bigger activities to look forward to such as cooking one meal over the fire pit every Sunday, driving to the coast at midnight to watch for the northern lights, and going on a star lore kayak paddle around the Les Cheneaux Islands with a tour group. I also found ways to make my work week more intentional such as writing this newsletter in places other than my office each week, like the garden, a park, or a coffee shop.

We are creatures of habit. And sometimes that can be our downfall. Another man in the documentary I watched said the meaning of life was to experience the world. There are many ways to do this, and not just by walking from one end of Spain to the other. No matter where you are, there are real world experiences in every nook and cranny of the planet. But all of them require change, even small shifts from time to time.

Spending as much time with the water as I can this summer is a top priority

People always want to know how to make things last. But this often has the opposite effect because the only constant in the universe is change, and when we go against this natural flow, we fall into a rut. Days string together. The weeks become a blur. Months tick by like the second hand on a clock. So instead of trying to make the summer last, or anything for that matter, why don’t we keep filling our time with things that stretch us and fill us up.

There are of course certain seasons of life where that’s just not possible, and we can honor those too. There are real life experiences that are won not through adventures but in times when we have to keep our head down and survive.

the garden reaching further skyward

But if you’ve been feeling the passing of summer and mourning it before it’s even gone, take some time to put a few things on your calendar that will pull you back into the season and your own body.

Learn a new recipe, meet a new plant, explore a new town, look up local events, do something you’re afraid of, have lunch with someone you haven’t seen in a decade. Even small shifts can have a domino effect on our own perception of time. If you’re a list maker, make three categories for “people”, “experiences” and “purpose”. Write down all of the activities that fall into these categories, then schedule them.

There is still so much summer left. We live in this wild, chaotic, magnificent world and the wildest part is that we belong to it. Our natural state is curiosity. The earth wants to know us as much as we want to know it.

the abundance of solar energy with St. John’s wort

I think the reason summer felt so long when we were kids is because every day felt like a new adventure. Maybe if we could infuse a bit of that into our adult lives, time would stretch and bend again. We need to give ourselves permission. We are allowed to want to explore and to leap without looking when our intuition tells us to.

Much love,

Val