RSVP Frogspawn
When do the blackbirds nest round your way? When does your local horse chestnut burst into leaf? When do you see your first snowdrops and bluebells?
Happy Friday — And Equinox!
On the British Isles, at least, our days are now more light than dark. Soak it up!
For those of you new around these parts, welcome 👋
My name is David and I’m a writer, outdoor instructor and cyclist-at-large with Thighs of Steel. In this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
Welcome to edition 394.
The Eightfold Wheel Of The Year
I’m currently reading Katherine May’s Wintering and she drew my attention to the Druidic Eightfold Wheel Of The Year.
The Eightfold Wheel divides the calendar into eight segments, as would the spokes on a (very unusual) bicycle wheel. And each of those spokes represents an opportunity for debauchery and misrule in the form of the following key festivals:
21 March: Spring Equinox 🌱
1 May: Beltane, mating season 🐇
21 June: Summer Solstice, the longest day ☀
1 August: Lughnasadh, harvest and marriage season 🌽
21 September: Autumn Equinox 🍂
31 October — 2 November: Samhuinn, death season 💀
21 December: Winter Solstice, the longest night 🌜
1 February: Imbolc, snowdrops and lambing season 🐑
Some of these festivals are still exceedingly popular (Christmas, Easter eggs), but most have been forgotten (Imbolc, all Equinoctes), corrupted (in the form of Bank Holidays), shunned (Samhuinn) or, by some, even despised (Halloween). Big shame.
Marking the passing of the year in this regular and cyclical way has a range of benefits for our hearts and our souls:
They bring together our communities, alive and dead
They connect us with nature and the land we live on
They connect us both with the inexorable passing of time…
… And yet, equally, with the eternal familiarity of the seasons
The wheel turns every six weeks, giving a purposeful momentum to the year, with something fresh to look forward to every month or two.
What’s more, this wheel rolls on British soil; it emerged from the practical folklore of the specifically British. This isn’t ‘British’ in the jingoistic sense of king an’ country, hare an’ hounds, biscuit cuppa tea — none of that crap. What holds our wheel together is our common ecology.
Of course, our wheel won’t be much different to the French or the Dutch, but it will be a little different. We have slightly different habitats and weather patterns, which mean slightly different fungi, plants, birds and animals.
So there is a comfort in knowing that this wheel wasn’t designed to serve any ulterior religious, monarchic or consumerist motive, but evolved, in almost Darwinian fashion, from the conditions of life on these islands.
And this made me wonder about what other important dates we could celebrate. I’m getting greedy. Why mark the changing of the season once every six weeks when there is something marvellous happening all around us, all the time?
On Sunday, for example, I saw my first horse chestnut candle of the year, embryonic and still cocooned in a wrap of leaves on the cusp of unfurling.
Horse chestnuts are among the first of our beloved trees to burst their buds, a sign that temperatures are rising, a florid harbinger of sunnier horizons.
(I say, ‘our beloved trees’, yet horse chestnuts are relatively new to the British Isles, introduced in the late sixteenth century from those sunnier horizons of the Balkan peninsula. Even so, apart from the apple, there is no tree that connects me so directly to my very British childhood.)
This miracle happens every year, always around the spring equinox, and there’s a nice symmetry that, at the other end of summer, their seeds, ‘buckeye’ conkers, rowdily celebrate our autumn equinox.
That’s two dates for our shared calendar already and we’ve only looked at one tree. What more, what more? What news from nature marks today’s festivities?
The incomparable delights of Nature’s Calendar tells me that blue tits and blackbirds have been building their nests in the New Forest this week. Early again this year, earlier every year, but raise a glass and mark them down on our calendar!
Of course, the ecology of the New Forest is very different to Bristol, Glasgow, Cromarty or wherever you live. Swindon.
So when do the blackbirds nest round your way? When does your local horse chestnut burst into leaf? When do you see your first snowdrops and bluebells?
I dare you to put these dates into your calendars — and I don’t mean the Woodland Trust calendar you got for Christmas, be bold! Put these pagan festivals of nature into your work calendar, shared with the office, notifications turned on loud.
RSVP the red admirals, crocuses, frogspawn and bumblebees. This is an all day event.
Spring in progress.
Are You Using Your Phone?
Or is your phone using you? (Duh, duh, DUH!)
After years of back and forth, looking for the perfect phone, I have finally accepted that my search is in vain.
People: it is impossible to hotspot like it’s 2024 AND party like it’s 1999. Prince is not to blame; he had no part in this.
The demands I have for my mobile device are seductively simple, yet tragically elusive:
Reliable maps (for trains, cars, bikes and boots)
5G hotspot tethering to other devices
As little else as possible
The only device that will do both of the first two is a smartphone, with all the bells and whistles that violate the third.
And so, after giving the Punkt MP02 one last try, I finally gave up and gave in. For better or worse, I am now a committed smartphone user.
All I can do is ameliorate my misery with software.
I have used many digital wellbeing apps — RescueTime, Freedom and Unpluq to name the three that I have found most useful — but none have done any more than present temporary obstructions to my digital freefall. (It’s both deliberate and telling that I haven’t bothered to link you to those apps.)
On Monday, however, I came across another solution: minimalist app launchers.
Minimalist app launchers don’t change the functionality of my phone one iota, but they radically change the way that I access those functions. And I mean radically.
Here’s what my app screens (yes, plural) look like when I use the default Samsung app launcher:
And here’s what my app screen looks like now, after installing the ‘minimalist AF’ Olauncher:
After losing every battle, with my final shot I might have won the war.*
Thank you to Tanuj for designing Olauncher and releasing it into the world, open source and ad-free. You have made me very happy today.
*Needless to say, I am still collecting stats on my phone use since making the switch. Results to come in a forthcoming episode…
Huge thanks to all the paying subscribers who helped make this story possible. You know who you are. I’m pouring out a tea in your honour. Thank you. 💚
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As always, thank you for your eyeballs and thanks for your support. 💚
Big love,
dc:
I've been increasingly drawn to the eightfold cycle over the last few years (particularly as an Imbolc baby), I'm getting there, but I still find it incredibly hard to set aside the time and come up with the ritual that might meaningfully split the year. I meant - I really meant so hard - to go up to the moor above our house and meditate for an hour on the 21st. But then I got busy, and the day swooshed by, and I got tired, and... I didn't do it.
In the meantime, however, the world leaves signs for me. I got up early on the morning of 22nd and found that the chickens had left this - https://www.instagram.com/p/C4zrDI5y8zG/ - first egg of the year! Then I went out for the walk and meditate which I had intended for the previous day, and in every pond along the way were thick clumps of frogspawn. The overnight change, made manifestly obvious. Of course, up here the seasons turn later - not only are we in the northernmost part of England, we are very high up so that, for example, the hawthorns flower around a month later than they do in the valley.
All these signs. When you live out here, they become unavoidable, and they connect you. Three weeks ago, the lapwings, curlews and oystercatchers arrived, and now they sing throughout the night. I have a Google Photos album named after the yearly change that brings me the most joy, "roadside flowers", and from it I see that we have around 6 weeks until the verges explode with wild violets and marsh orchids. In the meantime, I keenly await the arrival of dandelions and buttercups.
I see from my archive that, exactly one year ago today, these changes were once more on my mind:
https://peakrill.substack.com/p/signs-of-life
Shout out to John Higgs's Octannual Manual - https://johnhiggs.substack.com/ - which is published on the eightfold days. I'm jealous of John's discipline.