Turning The Wheel Of The Year

Weather Sets The Mood

Our weather, in the stark but lovely shadow of Madre Grande, is never just ordinary. Spring and summer are marked by long weeks of cloudless skies. The sun’s face then is uncompromisingly radiant, so by noon even large boulders are seared to the point where they are painful to touch. Such climate creates an archetypal high desert so familiar to those who explore the American southwest. But there is a slow, primordial rhythm at work behind the scenes, a planetary yin and yang which becomes obvious only as the wheel of the year revolves past its zenith. Fall sets in suddenly, so precipitously in fact, that even savvy residents are caught unaware. In the course of a single day, our weather turns sullen, dark, and cool.

The Weather of Reminiscence

In September, we wake to a pea-soup fog so thick a paltry distance of twenty feet recedes into infinity. Creepy dampness, reminiscent of a haunted house rather than a bright desert, fills every nook and cranny of what was, only hours before, clear, crisp openness. Our thoughts respond appropriately, of course, moving into realms of past foibles and triumphs, recollecting actions taken in the heat of the moment that have long  banked into lifeless embers. As night descends, the atmosphere becomes stranger still. Unmoving fog weighs down the land with palpable moisture, embracing us in its crypt-like, stygian depths. Without a bright flashlight, travel outdoors is impossible, for we are now blind as those eyeless fish who spend their days endlessly swimming through subterranean pools.

Our White Sage Energy Transcends The Weather

Our fields of organic White Sage, the pride of Lucky Six Farms, must also lie quiet in this eerily silent interregnum, like the other indigenous life-forms. Initiates into the Mysteries of old knew this liminal time well, for the fulcrum of the year reminds us of the frightening darkness into which we all descend, steadfast in our faith of renewed life. Although winter has not yet begun, we are confident of the invisible, vibrant stirrings just beneath the soil - and of the carefully stored fruits of our labor. Our work insures that the heart of the White Sage spirit, the very essence of purifying energy, never vanishes. It remains accessible across even the bleakest horizons for those who know and care.

By Alan Beck