Introduction
At the beginning of each month I like to locate myself, metaphorically, within what is happening around me: the annual cycles, the celebrations and festivals of the calendar, the arc of the stars, the waxing and waning of the moon and the passage of nature whispered on the wind.
This is the fourth instalment of a regular monthly almanac I write to share with you. It is, in the main, a figurative contemplation, seasoned with some of the more prosaic anchor points and markers that I personally cherish.
Inspiration comes from many sources and I have listed some of these below.
Here we look ahead to the month of March in the year 2024.
Calendar
Friday 1 March - St David’s Day (Wales)
Tuesday 5 March - St Piran’s Day (Cornwall)
Sunday 10 March - Mothering Sunday
Sunday 17 March - St Patrick’s Day (Ireland)
Wednesday 20 March - Spring Equinox (3.06am)
Wednesday 20 March - Ostara
Wednesday 20 March - Aries Season
Friday 29 March - Good Friday
Sunday 31 March - Easter Sunday
Sunday 31 March - British Summer Time begins: clocks go forward
Moon Calendar
Sunday 3 March - Last Quarter (3.23pm)
Sunday 10 March - New Moon (9am)
Sunday 17 March - First Quarter (4.11am)
Monday 25 March - Full Moon (7am) Plough Moon
Sky Calendar
Wednesday 13 March - Close encounter between Jupiter and waxing crescent moon after sunset
Tuesday 19 March - Close encounter between Gemini star Pollux and waxing gibbous moon before sunrise
Sunday 24 March - Best evening to see Mercury
Tuesday 26 March - Close encounter between Virgo star Spica and waning gibbous moon after sunset
The Rover’s Almanac: March 2024
Dawn, the last day of February, on the threshold of the new season, a leap year.
The wind is coming through keenly, still cold but beginning to cast off its winter coat, revealing younger fresher clearer skin that has the scent of spring.
Yesterday was the first evening we didn’t set the fire in the log burner. Nobody really noticed.
This morning at Culbin Sands it’s mild until the westerly wind blows arctic breath.
Seabirds on the tide-exposed sandbars fly up and turn to face the squall. Its strength almost halts their progress and they hang stranded in mid-air before diving down to escape, left and right.
Winter’s persistent fingers scour my exposed skin, gusting through my mind, clearing me out. The first layer dissolves.
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me! …1
It’s colder down here, close to the sea. The gibbous moon is bright. Grasses on the dunes whisper their secrets. The sky is black-blue. The sun warms the eastern horizon.
What colours here! The pastel sand, pastel sea and pastel sky with splashes of white seagull on the canvas in the early morning light.
With luck, spring will soon sally forth in leaps and bounds. On March 20th, at the spring equinox, the fertile maiden, bringing rain and sunshine, spring gales and high tides, will ‘saille' and ‘salire’2 into the wild wind in celebration of life.
A silhouetted sine wave of geese detaches from the dark treetops on the far horizon, the birds making their way, low across the newly rising sun.
A huddle of oystercatchers sit in reverent silence, watching. Moments later, when they rise together as one, the flash of their wings is like shimmering silver.
The sun-god rises. Do not look upon him directly, or he will have your eyes. Observe only that which he illuminates for your pleasure: wisps of blue-purple cloud, the bright red hull of a boat out on the Moray Firth, fluid sand flowing across the land like liquid, the moon flushing pink in response to the sun rising. She is flushed, afire, aroused, a slave of his intensity. Their sacred union the symbol of the fertile months to come.
In arable fields female’s prepare to resist the advances of mad March male hares, the sun will gain strength, days will lengthen, blossom and catkins will appear on the trees, eggs will hatch, buds burst, seeds germinate and busy farmers will turn their attention to the young calves and lambs.
Let it be spring!
Come, bubbling, surging tide of sap!
Come, rush of creation!
Come, life! surge through this mass of mortification!3
Dawn, the first day of March, crossing the threshold of a new season, a leap in the dark, toward the light.
Cold, cold, still air, a translucent coral moon, the sulphurous smell of seaweed, bated beach-huts with doors shut tight.
The sudden rush of a fast flock of oystercatchers flying past my head and over Findhorn Bay.
Across the water, out on the head, the harpies are calling to me, seductive sirens, feminine guile, personifying the beauty and deceitfulness of the sea, her seal song calling in spring, a melancholy, longing lament for something almost lost in the gloom of winter’s shadows.
Old lore warns against the presence of such a sea-sylph, as she foreshadows shipwreck or storm.
These maidens at the water’s edge long for my mortal soul, their sweet spring-song sending me to sleep on the sand, only to carry me away beneath the waves, never to be seen again.
Seals who cast aside their skins to come ashore to sing and dance, must resume their animal form by sunrise, so it goes.
As if summoned, it appears on the horizon, my salvation, the first spring sunrise.
Sources
The Almanac: A Seasonal Guide to 2024 by Lia Leendertz
Sacred Earth Celebrations by Glennie Kindred
Folklore Myths and Legends of Britain published by Readers Digest
Sky Guide (App)
BBC Countryfile
From Song Of A Man Who Has Come Through by D. H. Lawrence
Old French ‘saille’ - to rush out suddenly
Latin ‘salire’ - to leap
Craving For Spring by D. H. Lawrence