Rhythm & Time | Issue #15

...and not the kind practiced by musicians! On cyclic time, rhythms of place, and celebration

Dec 12, 2020

Placeful is a weekly newsletter exploring sense of place, sustainability, and the actions we can take to more deeply engage with our communities and wild spaces. Each week covers a new topic. To learn more about the “why” behind Placeful, start here.

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Last fall, while I was doing interview prep for my current job, a personal goal I was subconsciously striving toward became obvious to me.

Reflecting on the reasons I was seeking the position helped me realize that I longed to work cyclicly. I wanted more than anything for aspects of my work and personal life to follow the natural rhythms of nature that seemingly govern fewer and fewer processes in our lives.

As a student, I loved the cyclical nature of school: summer breaks, school supply shopping, reading a new syllabus. As a future employee at a garden-based education nonprofit, I would work closely with the change of seasons: planting in the spring, field trips in the fall, restoration and reflection in the winter, and predictable annual events to plan.

During the interview, this goal became clearer. No matter what came next, I wanted to feel a part of cyclic time, and weave that goal into my work and personal life as much as I could. In the delicate balance between progress and rhythm, I wished for more of the latter.

In this issue of Placeful, I argue that recognizing and celebrating the unique rhythms of our lives and communities can further connect us to the places we live, and I demonstrate how the cyclic calendar of the natural world can keep us grounded when time feels like it is moving so swiftly.

What is cyclic time?

In all honestly, I don’t feel smart enough to answer this question… but here are my thoughts and a tiny bit of research.

Time is a concept, and as such, differences in our construct of time can vary between cultures. Early anthropologists, such as Edmond Leach, mistakently categorized some cultures as relying on only one of two supposedly distinct concepts of time: cyclic and linear. We now know that this a mistake, and that each culture relies on a mix of these two core concepts, intertwined with other views.

For today’s purpose, I’d like to think about it in terms of rhythym, or repetition—naturally occuring phenomena that can be expected, such as the change of seasons, the waxing and waning of the moon, a full revolution of the earth around the sun—and a view that time, in addition to marching forward, is also in some ways marching in a circle.

The rhythms of place

As I was sitting in the bath last night (as I often do), I was thinking about my experience of fall and winter in the Southwest; it is my first time after all. Many markers of the changing seasons stayed the same—holidays decorations hung by neighbors, pumpkins and then christmas trees for sale around town, leaves turning color. But one thing was missing: geese!

Growing up in South Dakota, the migration of Canadian geese was a clear sign of colder weather to come. I remember huge flocks of them descending on small cattle ponds and golf courses, and flying in their quintessential V-formation over the corn fields in front of my house.

I looked up a range map, and though Canada Geese can be found in Utah all season, I missed seeing the migration, and haven’t myself seen them around town any time of the year.

The Canada goose migration is one example of a cyclic phenomenon—just like the flowering of the prickly pear cactus in the desert spring—that exists only in certain places. As a child, I didn’t recognize the uniqueness of this event resultant from place, and as an adult I didn’t realize until yesterday the emotional attachment that I had to it.

Like the migration of Canadian geese, each place that we live has its own rhythm, a cyclic calendar that, depending on what we are talking about, existed far before calendars were invented. Changing seasons, migratory patterns, birth, life, and death on an individual and collective scale, they all represent the cyclic nature of life on earth.

We can train ourselves to see the unique rhythyms of our communities, and further understand what it means to exist in our particular time and place on this earth.

What do we choose to celebrate?

The approach of the 2020 holiday season has also had me reflecting on time. As many have bemoaned since March, time has seemed to lose a lot of meaning when each day in socially-distant life is somewhat the same. Though I feel less affected by this than other folks, I still found myself appreciating more than usual the arrival of crunchy fall leaves and the preparations for the holiday season.

Anticipation is a strong emotion—something to look forward to gives us a reason to keep pushing through difficult times. Imagine if we can recreate that anticipation throughout the whole year for other events?

It is possible to create this for ourselves. It is just up to us and our communities to look for meaning, and decide how to celebrate it.

In Braiding Sweetgrass (which I will probably never stop quoting), Robin Wall Kimmerer describes the Indigenous celebration that precluded and accompanied the return of salmon to their breeding grounds, and the burning of the headlands that lit their way home. The return sets off a celebration involving food, dance, and endless gratitude. Native communities along the shoreline dressed in their finest for the salmon’s homecoming.

On ceremonies—of which there are many in the Western world, like graduations and birthday celebrations—she writes,

Ceremony focuses attention so that attention becomes intention. If you stand together and profess a thing before your community, it holds you accountable.
Ceremonies transcend the boundaries of the individual and resonate beyond the human realm. These acts of reverence are powerfully pragmatic. These are ceremonies that magnify life.

The author argues that many of today’s ceremonies focus on the self and personal achievements, but we have a lot to gain as a society when we expand our celebrations outward. “To have agency in the world,” writes Robin Wall Kimmerer, “ceremonies should be reciprocal ce-creations, organic in nature, in which the community creates ceremony and the ceremony creates communities.

How can we combine ceremony in our own lives and homes, or in our broader communities? What do we currently celebrate, and what is going uncelebrated that deserves our love, admiration, and gratitude? Reflecting on cyclic time and the rhythms of our communities can help us discover what is worthy of celebration.

Slowing down time

If the world seems to be moving to fast, and time for celebrating seems scant, keep in mind this bit of research mined from Daniel Pink’s book When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing:

Melanie Rudd, Kathleen Vohs, and Jennifer Aaker found that the experience of awe—the sigh of the Grand Canyon, the birth of a child, a spectacular thunderstorm—changes our perspection of time. When we experience awe, time slows down. It expands. We feel like we have more of it. And that sensation lifts our well-being.

When we make time in our lives for seeking out awe and moments for celebration, we might find that we have more of it. Let’s tap into the rhythms of our communities, and celebrate what we find there.

With love,

Emily

Placeful Practice

What natural event do you find yourself looking forward to each month, or each year? A full moon? The first spring daffodil? What gets you as excited as Lorelai Gilmore during the first snow? And finally, how can you meaningfully acknowledge and celebrate it in a way that feels genuine? Reflect on this and, as always, make a plan to incorporate it when its season arrives.

Share the cyclic moments that you look forward to, or any other thoughts you have about this week’s issue below!

Placeful