What a great summer I’ve had. I did not want it to end.
I noticed it first as grumpiness. A low, stubborn irritation when the mornings came in darker and cooler, when the light slanted differently through the windows, and when I gave in and reached for long sleeves. I kept planning as though the long evenings would stretch on forever. I was hoarding summer, clutching the warmth and ease and brightness like something I could store in a jar and keep on the shelf.
In Yoga philosophy there’s a word for this. Aparigraha, and it is usually translated as non-grasping. We tend to think of it in terms of things, but apparently I grasp at seasons too. At time. At versions of myself. I hold on to what was, and in the holding, I stop opening to what is.
And while I was holding on so tightly, my creativity dried up. Words wouldn’t come. Ideas felt stale. I sat down to write and felt scattered and blank at the same time, restless but stuck. I blamed the season. I thought my muse had packed up and left with the sunshine. She hadn’t. I was starving her.
The wind that carries ideas
Ayurveda has a practice called ritucharya, living in rhythm with the seasons. As the seasons change outside us, they change inside us too, and we stay balanced by adjusting how we eat, move, rest, and live.
The shift from late summer into fall is the move from Pitta season, hot and fiery, into Vata season. Vata is made of air and space. It’s the energy of wind, movement, and change: the leaves letting go of the branch, the geese lifting off the water.
Here’s what I had forgotten. Vata is also the energy of creativity. In Ayurveda, it governs movement of every kind, including the movement of thought, breath, and inspiration. When Vata is balanced, it shows up as imagination, enthusiasm, quick insight, the feeling of ideas arriving on the breeze. Fall, the season of Vata, is naturally a creative season.
But Vata has a shadow. When it’s neglected, when we’re cold and depleted and resisting, that same airy energy turns into anxiety, scatter, overthinking, and the kind of creative block that feels like static. The wind that could carry ideas just blows everything around.
That was me. I wasn’t short on creative energy. I had plenty. It just had nowhere to land, because I was spending all my effort pushing against the season instead of tending it. My muse wasn’t gone. She was hungry, cold, and blowing around with nowhere to rest.
The transition between seasons, what Ayurveda calls ritu sandhi, is a tender time. Grasping at the old season makes it harder. Caring for the new one makes it fertile.
So I went to the forest to see how nature handles change.
The nursery stumps
If you’ve walked in an old coastal forest, you’ve seen them: nursery stumps. What’s left of a tree that fell or was cut long ago, now covered in moss, ferns, saplings, whole ecosystems rising from the wood. The tree didn’t hold on to being a tree. It let itself become something else, and in the becoming, it fed everything that came after. Its release is its creativity.
The more I photographed them, the more they seemed to be showing me the stages of my own shift.
This one sits in deep shade, soft and green with moss, damp to the touch. To me it’s water and earth, the very qualities that steady Vata: moist, heavy, grounded, nourishing. It isn’t rushing to become anything. It’s simply absorbing and softening. This is where feeding the muse begins. Before the ideas can flow, the ground has to be tended. Warmth, rest, nourishment, stillness. The creative wind needs somewhere soft to settle.
Then there was this one. In a dense, dark stretch of forest, a single shaft of light falls on one stump, and it is exploding with life: tiny hemlocks, huckleberry, ferns reaching up. This is fire and space. Once the ground is prepared and there’s room and light, growth rushes in almost faster than you can keep up. When I finally stopped clutching at summer and started caring for myself in the new season, this is what it felt like inside me. A clearing opened, and ideas sprouted everywhere.
Some of the stumps look almost like art installations: hollowed crowns, sculpted edges, roots arching into doorways. Wind, water, and time have carved them into something the living tree never was. This is Vata’s artistry when it’s allowed to work: change as a sculptor rather than a thief. What we’re losing is being shaped into a form we couldn’t have designed ourselves.
And finally, these. Old stumps standing in still water, with new growth rising up out of them. There’s a stillness here that I can only describe as acceptance. Nothing is fighting. The stump has surrendered to what it is now, the water holds it, and green things grow anyway. This is balanced Vata: movement and stillness together, change held by something steady.
It’s the tranquility I was looking for, and it didn’t come from getting summer back. It came from putting summer down and picking up the care this season asks for.
What happened when I stopped resisting
The shift wasn’t dramatic.
I noticed the fog lifting off the trees and, instead of mourning the heat, I thought: oh, that’s beautiful.
Bring on warm soup, candles, floofy dogs, blankets.
Small acts of self-care. Acts of creative nourishment. Every warm meal and quiet evening is a way of giving the restless wind inside me a place to land. And once it has somewhere to land, I can create like a creating thing.
The words came back. Not in a trickle, but in a torrent, the way new growth crowds onto a stump in a patch of light. Breathing fresh life into my book. Fed and warm, my muse came home. It turns out I didn’t need summer to be creative. I needed to stop fighting fall long enough to let its energy move through me.
Feeding your muse this fall
If you’re feeling that grumpy resistance, or that scattered, stuck feeling, here are some ritucharya practices that can help you ground into fall so the creativity can flow. Warm, cooked, slightly oily foods like soups, stews, root vegetables, and warming spices soothe vata’s dry, airy nature. A daily self-massage with warm sesame oil (abhyanga) is deeply grounding and feels like tucking yourself in. A steady routine, with regular times for waking, eating, creating, and sleeping, gives the wind something to move along rather than scattering it everywhere. Try making creative time part of that rhythm, a warm drink, the same chair, the same hour, so your muse knows where to find you. And walk in the forest. Put your hands on a mossy stump and remember that everything is always on the way to becoming something else.
Summer is compost.
It’s feeding whatever comes next.
What’s waiting to grow for you?
Totally brilliant. Thank you dearest Kay 🍂🙏🏽❤️