We are in a collective fire season (summer) that asks us to find action and adventure to stoke our potentially more energetic and curious spirits. Creation and quick connections are abound as the plants around us flower and reproduce. Just like the flowers bear fruits, we to can master the art of making something and then taking stock as we see how one ending spitballs into infinite new beginnings.
(Summer 2025)
We are in a collective air element season (autumn) that asks us to begin the integration of our flourishing season's lessons or experiences. Our bodies begin to wind down, but the winds of change, wild ideas, expressive authenticity flow for another allotment of time. We notice the beauty of rest more and how balancing is an active practice as much as it is allowing or stepping back to simply notice.
(Autumn 2025)
We are in a collective water element season (winter) that asks us to pause more, be still, reckon with clarity that comes from the quiet we are willing to keep nurturing within. I hope for more wisdom to flow in through dreams and creative meandering as the air is more often still with gentle falling snow. Crisp days and nights are striking as they are a shock to the system. We are not guaranteed constant ease, nor is it good for us but we are built to overcome and find ourselves more nourished and robust along the way as our agency is revealed by our actions. Read more in the winter newsletter here.
Four Hills of Life
The four hills of life are an Ojibwe (Indigenous) approach to deeply understanding the life cycle of all living things. In this embodied philosophy, the phases of infant, youth, adult and elder are connected to the seasons on earth (Peacock & Wisuri, 2011). Infancy is compared to spring, where life is new and bursting with energy but also quite changeable, like the rainy days followed by warmth that fall back to colder, wet weather. Youth is the season or hill to climb with the most heat, steady growth, and potential overwhelm or intensity, encapsulated within summer. Adulthood is the clear, brisk fall where the mind is clearer, more capable, and home to the great harvest of our lives. Winter is the reflective, wise climb of elder-hood, a healing time with supreme quiet, peace, and plenty of rest. There is a thorough interweaving of nature’s way within the understanding of the four hills: the acknowledgment of all things working in circular patterns of birth, death and rebirth like seasons on earth.
I see it as an insightful and helpful connection to draw upon in my work as it centres a close relationship to nature, and a way to digest all of the wisdom it offers. The comparison of lived experience interacting with the seasons and a possibly more theoretical understanding of each stage of life, make the four hills a comprehensible, and richly creative analogy. The understanding of this approach inspires original thought, and a closer examination of our interconnectedness with nature.
References
Peacock, T., & Wisuri, M. (2011). The four hills of life : Ojibwe wisdom. Minnesota Historical
Society Press
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