Summer Solstice: Renewal, rebirth and hope for the future
The summer solstice is fast approaching, and as I’m learning more about how each season ebs and flows, it feels fitting to investigate this important event on nature’s calendar.
For the first time in many years, I’m overseas for the celebration, continuing our three month journey across Spain and Portugal. The solstice is a time for renewal and rebirth, and, where I’ve felt a state of flux or stagnation in years gone by, things feel different this year.
Like many others, a long period of wintering in the colder months felt challenging at times, but the process served as a reminder to step back and make slow, incremental steps towards new growth come spring and summer. The period between Beltane and the Solstice have, like fresh spring leaves, felt like a true unfurling. Finding peaceful park ups beside foxglove-jewelled woodlands, swimming in natural pools or exploring salty shores whilst engaging with how local communities live has meant I’ve felt more connected to nature’s rhythms and how people interact with them than ever before.
So, how have communities celebrated the solstice across history, and will our relationship to this time of year change in our ever-evolving world?
Facing new challenges with ancient solutions
As the sun reaches its highest point in the sky, we welcome the longest day of the year and the beginning of summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Marked as the peak of summer since the Neolithic era, it’s a time wrapped in folklore and ancient traditions. From the pagan custom of jumping over bonfires for good luck and a prosperous harvest, to abundant feasts, singing, dancing and crafts, celebrations vary across the world – with many uniting over the reconnection and growth this time of year symbolises.
Whilst this trip has certainly been one of growth, beauty, abundance and learning, it’s also served as a reminder that our world is changing. Scorched crops and soaring temperatures have been a consistent theme for the last month or so, and admittedly we’ve found it difficult to keep the van cool on our travels.
We were lucky enough to stay with multiple local families in Portugal who provided shade and shared a genuine concern for the environment and the systems affecting it. As spring drew to a close, I couldn’t help but question what the summer or solstice celebrations would represent in the coming years. Will our attitudes change as the climate changes? Will this time of year acquire a new meaning altogether? Or will we find solace and solutions in old traditions?
With these familiar worries weighing on my mind, they eventually weaved their way into the conversations we were having on our travels – but many hosts came back with a similar, reassuring and hopeful messages like the story shared below:
They explained how new tenants moved into their village and watched the land they were now stewards of – waiting, observing and allowing the ground and all that it held to wash over them as waves of green erupted and tumbled into an evolving ecosystem. Gradually, they got to know existing species and the new ones that had returned to the ground – reflecting the health of the soil and the thriving nature of it all.
Rather than mowing, churning and attempting to ‘tame’ their little slice of wild, they watched it flourish, and, just as gradually as they watched, the stewards began to work with it. Planting, tending, nurturing.
In time, land that was once barren, hardened and cracked due to years of mono-cropping and pesticides became a haven for pollinators and people. The time and patience given to their patch helped it return to a natural, beating rhythm where food, flowers and fauna were in abundance once more.
Through trial and error, they found ways to adapt to big shifts by thinking small – creating solar-powered small holdings, collectives and initiatives where neighbours pooled their resources, nurtured native plants and worked with the land to produce their own food – facing new challenges with ancient solutions.
They depended on the earth as it depended on them. Nature once again reminding us that we are it.
So, whether you celebrate the summer solstice each year or you’re new to the traditions surrounding it – take some time to mark the occasion and reconnect with this place we call home.