This has happened to me recently. Due to various (positive) changes in my life, things have come the full circle and I find myself now living in the area of my childhood. The dry country, fresh water rivers, huge open sky, friendly people, and simple living, are again a part of my every day life, not just memories to carry me through, or glimpses here and there as in other chapters. 

As winter gives way to spring, the wattle trees are first to embrace the warmer days with their bright yellow flowers throwing colour throughout suburban streets and along farm driveways. The wattle is the first reminder that change is constant and a new season is almost upon us, yet again. 

The seasons are extreme here, by Australian standards anyway. Winter in Australia will never compete with winter in North America, Europe, Northern Asia, or in the far Southern Hemisphere. But by Australian standards, this area gets pretty chilly during winter, often below freezing overnight, leaving huge frosts upon once-green grass, burnt brown from the cold. The evening fires inside homes nurture both the body and heart with their warmth and light. 

Winter days here are glorious, almost always full of sunshine and huge blue skies. Autumn and winter are my favourite times of year, offering freedom to enjoy the outdoors before the searing heat of late spring and summer arrive. Yesterday as I sat by my favourite river to write, with only the sounds of birds singing, the breeze blowing, and the water bubbling by, I was overwhelmed with gratitude, as I am every time I visit out there. 

It isn't warm enough to swim yet, as tempting as it looked. But the peace still nurtured my soul, reminding me of the perfection of the seasons, and how our own lives are the same. 

We go through seasons ourselves and sometimes it is a time to rest and wait, sometimes it is a time to be active and move forward. Trusting yourself to know which season is which takes time, courage, and practice. But moving within the personal seasons that our lives move in helps us to flow more naturally with life. 

Walking later with my dear mother, down a street of the little country village that she lives in, we marvelled at the distant mountains, the line of trees showing the flow of the river in its valley, and at the colours of spring arriving everywhere, including the wattle trees already in bloom. I brought up the subject of seasons in our own lives, to which she agreed. 

The more we can accept that there are different seasons we go through in our personal lives, not just in our physical lives with changing weather, the more peaceful life is. And of course, the more enjoyable it is too. Resisting the patterns of personal seasons causes suffering as we try to force things that are not yet ready to ripen. So often we feel like we must be doing something, but sometimes the thing that needs doing most is to wait, trust, and simply allow things to unfold, not blocking them by trying to force them to come through sooner than is their own season to. 

It is a season of newness here - a season that has followed one of challenges, acceptance, courage, and letting go. It is the season to allow all that has been put in place previously to unfold, a season of love and comfort, of trust and faith, of blessings and beauty. 

I wonder if the little yellow flowers of the wattle tree realise just how much they signify to this grateful soul wandering past in gratitude, how symbolic their bloom is, and how the results of their beauty reach far and wide around the globe to other philosophical souls who also relate to these thoughts? 

Blessings to you friends, from a land of yellow flowers, flowing rivers, majestic mountains, and a huge country sky.