The first Signs of Spring

Its February 2nd.
'Officially', Imbolc was yesterday. Our grove ceremony is tomorrow. Today, it just felt like it.

The dogs needed walking, and I remembered that I did a particular walk last year, which set off  a years worth of work for me, so I decided it would be good to do the same walk again today, to seal it off.

To start the day though, with the sun pouring through the windows, I grabbed a pair of clapsticks that I have made - ash ones seemed right, and I sang to the sun in the living-room, the room where it gets the most sun and it warms up the whole room.

When we were ready for our walk, I was assuming we'd be about 2.5 - 3 hours so we all set off, the 2 dogs and I, looking for signs that Imbolc was truly here, now, on this day.

Snowdrops -tick
Warm Sunshine -tick
Cold Wind - tick
Frost and Ice - tick
No lambs to be seen. I know they have been born, from the farmer in the next village, but they are still in the lambing sheds at the moment, not in the fields. However, as we went along the bridle path that cuts through the zoo, I did see baby capybara and a baby elephant :-)

Along the canal to the reed beds. I had done some shamanic work here at samhain with the reeds, and they had asked me to make a dream-catcher and hang it in the branch of a tree overhanging the bed, which is what I had done. As I was passing I thought it would be good to see if it was still there - but Alas! the tree, one of a row of trees, just that one - has been chopped down and was lying in pieces at the side of the reed bed. I did have a good look for the dream-catcher, but I couldn't find it.

At first I was concerned that the singular tree that I had hung it in had been cut down, but sitting there for a while, I thought, well, I made it at the request if spirit, and spirit guided me to that particular tree. If it had been earmarked for felling, just maybe, my dream-catcher was there for a reason, to serve some function for the tree awaiting its fate. I don't know. But thinking that it was chopped down because there was a dream-catcher in it is a bit far fetched.

Anyway, I sat there with the reeds, and cut some of them to make into a Brigid's cross. The vertical standing reeds were too dry and snapped rather than bending, I was expecting this, and thought I might have to take them home and soak them first to make them supple, before realising that the base of the reed bed is fallen reed stems laying in water already, so I used those ones instead. 16 pieces of reed for each cross, stripped and cut and laid out on the canal towpath. A few people passed me and said nothing.
One old man passed just as I had finished it and was hanging it on a twig while I cleared up. From his voice, he sounded Polish, and he remarked on what I had made, and asked what it was, and I said it was to celebrate the first signs of Spring..
"oh its not Spring yet though..." - No, but its the first signs of life, the lambs and the bulbs coming up..
"Ah I understand", he said, and then went on to tell me about making christmas decorations and chandeliers to hang candles from, out of wheat straw, we spent a good while talking, and he used more reeds to demonstrate how to make the things he had made as a child, and there was lots of smiling and laughter, before he went off on his way.

I wanted to make another cross, so I went a bit further along and made a second one. This time another old man stopped and asked what I was doing.
"Is it for EVIL purposes?" he demanded...
...Err... no, its for SAINT Brigid, I replied.
"Oh, ok. What does it mean?" -  So I said again about the first signs of spring.
"But its not Spring yet" - So again, I repeated about the first signs that it is on its way, the lambs and the bulbs emerging.
"Well, I'm not arguing with you, you obviously think you know better" - Oh ok :-/
And somehow this led into a longer conversation about life, allotments, the weather, litter, trees - everything was wrong of course, when I said it, even though he would in a couple of sentences time say the same thing that I had just said, but I took it in good humour and he walked a length of the canal with me, although I was laughing and talking with him, I was secretly hoping he wasn't going to walk the entire length with me, and sure enough, at the next bridge he left me, to go up the road, effing and blinding at some people who were fishing on the other side of the canal.

My fingers were cold carrying the 2 crosses, so I fashioned a long stick to carry them with for the next hour home... there's me walking along the canal tow path with a long stick and 2 straw crosses suspended from the end of it, I have to admit it did remind me somewhat of the Blair Witch Project, but none of the people I passed stopped to talk or ask what they were, and I was left in peace.

As I got to a particular stretch of the canal, I remembered that a year ago, I did this same walk, no crosses, but came away from the canal bearing the body of a dead dog that I had found, carrying death with me. I spent a year with the dog and then its bones, finishing the ritual off only 3 weeks ago. And last year had been a year of deaths in the family, just maybe that was the imbolc seed that foretold the coming year.
This year however, I have repeated the same journey and come away with life, confidence and laughter, and it felt really good to acknowledge this.

So I have 2 crosses, one will be for the sacred well where we are having our ceremony tomorrow. The other  will hang on a shrine at home until later in the week, when I will give it to the River Dee. Finally, I hear her calling me, the Goddess of the river that flows through the town where I live.