Autumn
As the sunlight wanes and the soft morning dew turns to frost, we start to feel within us the innate contraction of autumn. We mourn the euphoria of the sun’s medicine and embrace the start of a new cycle, where we must find our own medicine within. This is the season when we are most drawn to the sacral hues of fire and cinnamon and find comfort in embracing autumn’s cozy palette and toasty flavors. As the weather cools, our bellies begin to heat up and we crave warming foods like bone broths, teas and spices that nourish and move the blood.
While the trees convert their last remaining chlorophyll to food, turn yellow and gift us with mulch, we must remember not to let our cups empty without a consistent creative practice in place. Last season, we were fed by the energy of the sun and her flowering conduits. Now, we must tap into more creative depths to stoke our inner flame. For me, this looks like fermenting and preserving the harvest, pressing the last of the garden’s flowers for bundle dyes, collecting seeds and roots for medicines, working on my poetry book and gathering with women to celebrate the equinox.
My home in autumn is often filled with the smell of roasted garlic and something savoury brewing slowly in the crock pot. My surfaces adorned with dried bouquets, many jars of pickles, misshapen gourds, and strings of citrus and rowan berries from a desire to bring the wild within. I’m always most appreciative of this season in the prairies, as it’s often short and sweet. Those of us that live in Alberta know too well that our beloved autumn is a fleeting love. One that we await all year long, just to bask in, however briefly.
As I move into a new flow with Rewild Kitchen, I am eager to start cooking for people again, to share the abundance of nature in the form of intuitive, intentional and cyclical fare. To guide those who feel disconnected, back home through the food on their plates. Rewild Kitchen started as a way to reconnect with the land and create in the kitchen, unapologetically. To play with wild flavors and food-waste, with no expectations that it would work out as planned. Quite simply, it began as a willingness to learn, get it wrong, and try something else. Such is this beautiful life.
