Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run.
“To Autumn” by John Keats
Inhale deeply. Can you already smell the change in the air, the different scent of the earth as it cools down and receives the darkness?
The equinoxes are the only time when both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere experience roughly equal amounts of daytime and nighttime due to the Earth’s tilt being neither away nor towards the Sun. During these times of great astronomical equalization, every one of us, no matter where we are on this one planet we share, experience roughly similar lengths of day and night. During this time of seasonal change, all earthlings have yet another thing in common. We breathe in the change, somehow, together.
As Dougald Hine pointed it out during his Keynote speech at this year’s European Ecovillage Gathering, conspiring means breathing together:
“We need to breathe together because the toxic kind of conspiracy theory is what comes when we're not breathing together. We really need the sharing of our stories, lives and experiences and different knowledges. (…) We need to share what's working, share that information across networks like gem because that's part of what's going to be called for, if things are going to turn out better the most people in our societies secretly fear they're going to turn out in the times around and ahead of us. When I'm with you in a space like this, I can see how that becomes possible.”
This is how the European Ecovillage Gathering felt like this summer. Breathing together, being together. Conspiring.
And as the dark part of the year unfolds before us this Autumn Equinox, let’s carry the sharing spirit of this year’s Gathering into our everyday lives – and remember that light spreads into the darkness, not the other way around.
| 
