The First Day of Spring?

It's become a little annual ritual for me about this time of year, going up into the Wicklow Mountains and gathering rushes for making St Brigid's crosses. I think this annual pilgrimage for me first occurred in 2015, in the midst of the jumble of my final year of training for ordination. I took a notion that it would be a terribly significant thing to do, to cut rushes and to bring them to church where I was an intern and encourage everyone to to make a St Brigid's cross to take home.

Flashback to 2020: Making St Brigid's crosses together in Christ Church Cathedral, when we still were barely aware of the coming pandemic!

St Brigid's Day, 1st of February, in Irish tradition is the first day of spring. When I first heard that I thought it was laughable. There is no feeling of spring in the air at the beginning of February--it is most certainly still winter! Yet despite the fact that every year, February arrives with wintery chill in tow, I nevertheless decided to embrace this tradition and tell myself it is the first day of spring. It is the first day of spring, this day which commemorates a female saint, one not far removed from the time of St Patrick. There's little enough of written-down-historical-record of her but she was obviously a woman who left her mark on things, to have been preserved in such a place of esteem amidst the saints of the early Celtic church.

Perhaps the making of the St Brigid's cross each year resonates with my penchant for tactile experience. Knitting scratches this itch, to have fingertips busy and stimulated. But it's not simply a mindless habit when I'm sedentary, this urge to feel. When I'm out for walks I'm forever pausing to lay my hand against the textured bark of a tree, or pressing and examining the springiness of this or that type of moss, or picking at bits of sheep's wool that has gotten snagged on barbed wire. The annual outing to cut rushes is positively a sensory adventure! Rushes are to be had up a mountain in wild places. The weather is inevitably eventful (because it's winter, no matter how much we are looking ahead to spring!), with wind, passing showers and possibly snow.

2019's expedition took me through a snow storm and up the Sugar Loaf to gather rushes!

As I was driving up yesterday, wearing sunglasses to lessen the blinding glare of the light beaming across the city of Dublin I could see the cloud bank setting on the mountains which were my destination. The wind whipped across my car and slammed the doors shut with force when I stopped. The cloud was there all around me, moving across the valley, briefly clearing to allow an achingly gorgeous picture postcard scene of the heather-covered hills, and then shifting again to obscure all view. Shaggy hill-farmed sheep grazed on either side of the narrow road. The odd crow was visible, stationary in the air, held in place by the strength of the wind driving its' way up from the valley below and over the mountain.

The clouds parted briefly to allow a fleeting glance at the stunning scenery which makes the trek so worth it.

And then the actual task of cutting the rushes! The tall bright green ones are the best. These are invariably located inconveniently and require wading through lumpy tussocks of undergrowth with soggy ground underfoot. Then bending over to cut handfuls with the secuters, while not being knocked over by gusts of wind. (And if you are me, also worrying that someone is going to come flying out of nowhere to tell me it is illegal to cut cut rushes from along the side of this remote mountain road, or some such).

This little project, this purposeful mountain trek, and then sharing the experience of making St Brigid's crosses with others has become a welcome mile-marker of the year. December is a mad sprint, no matter how much I try to slow the pace and stress the importance of Advent. The beginning of January is a hibernation, recovering from December. Rousing myself to mark St Brigid's Day, the first day of 'spring', serves as a good long stretch, waking myself and wiping the sleep from my eyes, finally ready to entertain the new year, which has already been quietly slipping away. Even in 2021, when we were back in the grip of pandemic restrictions and limitations on how far to stray from home I was determined. The mountains were too far away. But I discreetly made my way to a local seaside area, and instead of rushes, gathered a handful of tall grasses (again watching over my should, I'm sure I was breaking some rule) and used those instead. And as we couldn't gather in person to weave them, I made a little video and shared in on Facebook instead.

The pandemic was like that, doing our best to translate the rituals and markers of normality into some close approximation to fit the changed circumstances. So it seemed even more special this year, being able to take myself up the mountain to gather the rushes, and to be able to share the weaving of the St Brigid's crosses in person with others. I'm cherishing this little sign of spring, re-newel, re-emergence and healing from what we have experienced during these past 2 years of the pandemic.

February 2022: Sharing the weaving of St Brigid's crosses with friends from Zimbabwe.