Tag: Winter

Sounds of December

The changing of time

2021 is coming to a close and it is the last day of the last month of my “Sound Calendar”.

Although I have been listening carefully throughout December for something in nature that would represent this 12th month of the year, it has not appeared on my sonic horizon.

Instead I have chosen an audio clip, I have called “Time”. In December it seems to run away with itself, particularly in advent. It can feel hectic. And yet there is also a feeling of time slowing down when Christmas arrives; perhaps it even stands still? Time takes on a heightened significance as the old year comes to an end and we prepare for the new.

Time
Winter Mandala – created together on a walk (30th Dec 2021)

You can listen to the audio clips for the full 12 months of 2021 in:

Sound Calendar

Types:

A range of slow listening audio clips from nature

Candlemas

Imbolc

In the mid-point of Winter, when the ground is often under a layer of frost, there is a very gradual stirring of nature’s activity.  Snowdrops appear, greeting us with their bright white petals; a promise of the new light of Spring to come.

On Saturday evening (2nd February) we celebrated Candlemas in our garden, bringing forward some of that promised light to the apparently dormant earth.   A spiral of candles, laid on the crisp ground, symbolised the potential that the earth has to offer as winter gradually fades into spring.

Our fire bowl kept us warm, heated a delicious squash & chestnut soup and created the link that Candlemas has to the ancient Celtic festival of Imbolc – the first fire festival of the year.

A clear dark sky was flooded with stars.  Sirius, bright and clearly visible below Orion’s “belt”, twinkling in colours ranging from blue to red.