Living Between the Seasons

During this autumn, largely because we had no kitchen at home, we have spent each weekend camping in the hills of northern Pennsylvania. Each week, on the seventy-five–mile drive from home, we have watched the leaves change—slowly at first, then all at once. Our campground at Hammond Lake, beautifully cared for by the Army Corps of Engineers and set in deep forest, hosts magnificent red and white oaks, maples, Norway spruce, dogwoods, and eastern white pines. The last camping weekend of the year showed the trees in peak color, though some shed completely while we were there in the strong gusts that blew through.

It was astonishing beauty, and yet Samhain—the Celtic name for the beginning of winter—is upon us. The turning has begun.

Samhain lives between seasons. It belongs neither fully to autumn nor to winter. The earth is still rich with color, yet its energy is already withdrawing inward. The hinge of the year creaks open quietly, almost imperceptibly. This is the threshold time—the overlap of abundance and rest, when life and death, light and dark, coexist in harmony rather than opposition. Liminal space. Liminal time.

We often imagine winter as the bleak season—the bad season. But nature tells a different story. Winter is not the failure of life but its restoration. It is the Sabbath of the earth. Beneath the cold ground, the secret work begins: roots deepen and the soil replenishes. Buds form on the branches. What seems dormant is already preparing for renewal. The hidden, the quiet, the unseen—this is the womb of creation.

In the Jewish scriptures, divine compassion—rachamim—comes from rechem, the word for womb. These scriptures tell us that G*d’s mercy is womb-like: holding, sheltering, forming, bringing to birth what is not yet visible. To rest in G*d is to rest in that mercy—to trust that even in darkness, creation continues its gentle, sacred work. Winter is not death’s triumph; it is gestation. The womb and the tomb are kin, both places where G*d’s creative power stirs unseen.

At our Samhain retreat this weekend, we have spoken of the hinge quality of life—the way each season holds only a hint of what follows. Imbolc, starting in Feabruary, for us in upstate New York, begins in snow and bitter cold yet holds the promise of spring. Beltane arrives in May while frost or even snow may still surprise us. Lammas begins in August heat, the dog days of summer, yet whispers of harvest to come. And now, at Samhain, autumn still glows in the trees even as the nights lengthen. Nature never moves in clean divisions. Every ending is tinged with beginning; every beginning carries the memory of what has been.

Spiritually, most of life is lived in these in-between times. Rarely are we fully in one season or another. We live between grief and hope, between knowing and not knowing, between faith and fulfillment. Samhain teaches us to rest in that space without hurry—to let the turning happen in its own time.

Following the magnificent effort of our contractors, our kitchen and the main house were finished just in time for our retreat. Yesterday we made prayer (spirit) sticks from wood fallen in the yard and feathers gifted to us by our garden birds. Today we laid those sticks by the trees in the yard, trusting that G*d’s work continues in the unseen. We blessed the house, the land, the trees, and the birds and animals that share this space with us. We have given thanks for the strength of earth and its wounds. Our prayer is not to fix what is broken but to stand with the earth in its healing—to join the rhythm that is already at work beneath our feet.

So today, we stand among the trees between seasons: between light and shadow, between fullness and rest. We do not cling to what is passing, nor rush toward what is next. We pause in the hinge, the holy in-between time, and find there the quiet presence of G*d. The promise of Samhain is not death, but transformation. The world rests, the Spirit works, and what is hidden in the dark will, in its time, be born again into light.

+Ab. Andy