Fall is in the air and everything is falling all around, including my hair. Well, not quite like that, but I’m letting it go as easily as the trees let their leaves shift and drop. More on that shortly.

I read a short share from Avia Venefica exploring where the phrase “turning over a new leaf” came from. She writes:

“…many types of trees can detect changes in their environment. They sense a shift in weather before it happens. It’s as if they predict the weather. Trees adjust to these changes to prepare themselves for pending change. For example, deciduous trees like maples and poplars turn their leaves as a protective measure before a storm hits.

Rather than flippantly tossing about the catch-phrase of ‘turning over a new leaf’, maybe we can embrace the idea that a deeper presence within and around us is beckoning us to shift our position. Maybe a powerful, sentient energy sees a positive purpose for making a motion for our betterment – for our safety – for our future.”

She points to how the inherent awareness we have is easily distracted, whereas Nature continues to listen to the signals no matter what is going on in the outside world. There’s an innate wisdom that can guide us just like trees. Surrendering to that space of knowing how and when to change will lead us to our most optimal life experience.

Yesterday morning kicked off with an Autumn celebration of joy and change with a procession of over twenty quail, a chipmunk and a squirrl, with chattering birds to accompany, all parading in front of me with a grand show.

I shared a video of the fun on Instagram yesterday, which followed the quail from fence to fence of the perimeter of our yard, with a chipmunk and squirrel who kept zipping by to add giggles to the show. It all made me so happy!

The quail use our yard for grazing and as their path into the forest. This is the sweet family we’ve seen since the babies were tiny ones, now all grown. I was doing my usual morning feeding and cleaning routine with Astrid when I caught glimpse of the action. The quail were lined up along our fence and squirrel was enjoying his pine cone not far from them and then ran closer, as if to make sure he was in camera focus (as seen above and below).

I went outside to enjoy both their presence and purposeful journey, as they hopped down into the yard, grazed a bit and hopped back up to the forest-side fence to continue on. While watching them, a chipmunk got super excited and started to zip back and forth in front of me several times, which I caught on the video. And then squirrel (this is the same little guy who always comes to tease me when I’m in the garden) decided that looked like fun and wanted to steal the show. So he ran up closer and made sure to look straight into the camera and then over to the quail and back to me.

It was so cute watching all the activity and observing the quail, one-by-one hopping up to the fence, surveying the forest, and then jumping down onto the forest floor. One of them was so excited she overshot the fence and when leaping with flutter to the top, toppled right over instead.

This reminded me of a dream I had last night where I was flying. I have dreams of being in flight, although many of them are about the effort and concentration it takes to lift off the ground and keep rising, but I prove that flying is possible. This dream was very different. Like the little quail who overshot the fence with propulsion, I had almost too much propulsion and force behind my flight. So much so that I was able to bring two other people along with me, as we held hands in a line (reminding me of Peter Pan flying with Wendy and the kids) and I flew us up and far, doing all kinds of tricky maneuvers along the way. By the end of the dream, I was in fact learning to harness, refine, and dial back my energy a little because it was on full force and I was having to navigate us to a very specific coordinate that I couldn’t overshoot. That seemed like a significant dream to have at this change in cycles right now and with all that I’ve been experiencing.

But back to the quail – I adore them and love that our home is such a welcome place for all the forest creatures. They, along with the activity of the other little animals in Autumn prep, herald the change of seasons to me.

This traveling troupe, I read, take us on a journey of reflecting upon our life story and the symbolism around purpose and progress…to see if the details are aligning us to where we want to go and what we want to create as contribution. And synchronously, this HAS been a big focus for me recently.

They speak to any action being sacred and that even the smallest of steps in the direction of purpose will propel momentum and create opportunity. So, in this way they encourage action toward our goals and to seize what is showing up.

Quail are also very social, aware, instinctual, confident, connected, and community-oriented. So there are varying levels of how these messengers may show up in our lives. As always, only we can decipher how that translates for us.

And yesterday afternoon, Hope made a reappearance in the garden just outside of my office that I share with Astrid, my rabbit. She was enjoying yard munchies and even had a fun encounter with squirrel where they nearly ran into each other, and she bounded off in surprise. Of course, I giggled out loud. She sat under the fence a while just exposing her cute little cottontail and I enjoyed watching her explorations. I discovered later that she likely ate my comfrey plant, which is funny because it’s the first plant that finally took after about four efforts. I took it as a sign she’s blessing it for next year’s abundance. 😉

While watering, two chickadees were flying and perching next to me, chatting with curiosity and of course my squirrel friend made me laugh, as he ran right up to me on the top of the fence I was standing near, looked me in the eye, chattered and then ran off. He’s such a tease, as I said.

So, it was a big day of forest celebrations for tomorrow’s Equinox, the circle of life, sacred community, purpose and the journey, and enrichment even within the transitioning seasons of change.

I’m very much hunkering into the change of seasons, which includes inner preparations matching outer ones. I’m also loving to wear the Fall colors and matching the natural environment around me. It seems to be quite a full time recently for getting a LOT done.

Do you find yourself making any shifts too, whether consciously or instinctively? Or engaging in more things than normal?

I have a full couple of weeks of bulb planting, cutting old growth, bookkeeping, house cleaning, updating our Magick Rabbit Etsy shop (which I’m hoping I can get up for Equinox tomorrow since there’s a couple of sweet Autumn additions), Reiki 2 online training and road trip prep, alongside new focuses I’m developing. So, I feel a bit like the squirrels and chipmunks in seasonal production mode. Yet, like them, am making sure to integrate some fun along the way.

Which leads to the opening about “letting go of my hair,” as tomorrow I have my first appointment with my hairstylist that got rescheduled by divine alignment to Equinox. She only sees one person at a time now so that works well. I’m planning on the first big cut I’ve had in years, since I’ve been mostly just letting my hair grow during these transitional and deepening years.

Yet, I feel so ready for something lighter, fresher, softer and releasing all the years of old at the ends. Normally, I’ve been trimming about four inches off, but it grows so fast, it never seems like I do.

I’m not yet sure what will evolve this time, but it makes me excited because I love change and get bored pretty easily. This may just be the first stage of cuts to come, but whatever and whenever they happen, it is a way I align myself with the new. And since it’s been years since I have done anything more drastic, it undoubtedly reflects big, apparent, upgrading change.

I thought this was interesting. My hair is currently a little past my waist, as you can see in the left photo, which was taken Friday to document the before. The lighting wasn’t direct, so it was a little more accurate to my medium brown hair (of course I have silver too, as you can see in the photo above this one). Then just a couple of days ago, Dave saw the light on my hair streaming in from outside and took the photo on the right. It completely transformed my hair to a honey gold, or slightly strawberry blonde, which made me look like a completely different person from behind and actually mirrors my hair in photos from when I was a little girl. I had both pixie hair when I was super young, and then hair down to my butt for years. The right photo reminds me of little Tania and seems fitting to have recaptured that, since a lot of focus for me has been about retrieval of my parts.

Now, it’s about reinventing something new.

The shifting light of the season casting a glow of change and reflection.

I also have an eye appointment Thursday to upgrade my prescription, as I can tell my vision is shifting. Vision changes reflect, to me, a different perspective on life. Vision and perspective feels important, as it relates to everything shifting so much in the way we are experiencing the world and collective right now. There seems to be a call to alter our perceptions overall and even a mass movement in terms of the things more people are becoming ready to see now. As layers of the veil peel back, we are being asked to see with new eyes and trust what is being shown/felt because that will be more key in creating a different reality than the one we may have thought was the only version of reality available.

As always, I am fascinated by connecting dots of the journey and share these experiences as one of the ways in which we can invite awareness and creative energy to the process.

Nature reminds us that we need to relinquish the need to hold on tightly with fear and to trust in the process – to allow ourselves to have everything we thought we knew about ourselves to be stripped away, only to discover a greater truth to our authenticity beneath the temporary structures.

And in the process you’ll discover the only thing that is eternal is the core essence of who you are beneath the temporal layers. You learn then that the rest isn’t as serious as you make it and is simply part of the journey to that core.

We let go, just as the trees effortlessly allow their leaves to shift colors and float off in the wind. We embrace the only permanence, which is change. And we take grateful stock of what we do have, while preparing for a new birthing that will be incubating during the symbolic stillness.

Seasonal transitions mirror the evolution of human consciousness and the dynamic shifts of life cycles.

If you feel so called, perhaps you might create an intentional space, moment, or ritual of your pleasure to connect within and without as a way to unify through love.

I wish you a beautiful change of seasons that represents the merging of two into one and a balance between contrasting energies, at the portal point of Autumn Equinox (for Northern hemisphere folks) and Spring Equinox (for Southern Hemisphere folks). May it illuminate your inner journey in enriching and deepening ways.