“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.” — Ecclesiastes 3

For some of us, particularly those who struggle with a lack of light, the arrival of May feels like a moment of return. A quiet re-entry into the world. Blossom appears on branches that only recently felt held in winter, and trees are slowly, then suddenly, given back their leaves. There is something in that shift that feels almost physical. A lifting of weight, rather than simply a change of scene.

Before Julius Caesar formalised the calendar, the Romans marked the beginning of the year in spring. It is not difficult to see why. This is the season that draws us outward again, towards picnics, longer days, and the small celebrations that invite us to stay outside a little longer.

April, in particular, resists definition. A run of bright, warm days can feel like early summer, only to turn without warning. The air cools, the clouds gather, and we are pulled back into something closer to autumn. There is a kind of yo-yoing to it. An uncertainty that sits alongside optimism.

It is tempting to feel gloomy about the inconsistency of April’s weather, but perhaps it offers something else. Not a flaw in the season, but a kind of metaphor. April is not quite predictable, and perhaps that is part of its gift. It keeps us noticing, keeps us slightly on our toes, and asks us to remain open-minded, to let go of the urge to hurry towards certainty.

We tend to organise our lives in clearer terms than this. Work and rest. Activity and pause. Weekday and weekend. The weekend, in particular, has become a container for recovery, a time set aside for a version of happiness that sits apart from responsibility. But in practice it rarely holds. We carry the week with us. Thoughts linger. Moods do not adhere to the calendar.

There is a quiet tension in this structure. An expectation of rest, and the reality of being unable to fully enter it. So the question becomes not how to separate these states, but how to remain steady within them, and remember to keep looking.

For me, there is something in the act of lighting a fire at the end of an uncertain spring day. After hours of warmth and wind, brightness and chill, the ritual offers a return to a familiar friend. The warmth gathers gradually, then lingers. Even when expected, there is something quietly surprising in the way it fills a room, almost like a cloak. It alters the atmosphere before one has quite registered the change.

The fire itself is responsive. It shifts with what it is given, never quite the same from one moment to the next. There is a dance to it, but an undirected one, a quiet movement that keeps drawing the eye back.

Perhaps this is where the season and the fire meet. Both resist control. Both move according to their own rhythm. And both ask us, in different ways, to pay attention rather than impose order.

To sit with a fire is to return to noticing. To watch without needing to resolve anything. In a culture that leans heavily on certainty and outcome, this can feel unfamiliar, but it is not without purpose. There is a kind of intelligence in observation, in allowing things to be as they are, even briefly.

The creative part of us, if it is to remain active, depends on this. Not on fixed conditions, but on a willingness to stay open and remain receptive to what is not yet formed. April, with all its movement, offers a kind of practice in this.

So while we look ahead to longer days and more certain warmth, there may be something to hold onto in this in-between time. Not as a waiting period, but as a time with its own purpose. A space in which to recalibrate, to observe, and to adjust.

Like watching a flame, it asks very little. Only that we stay with it long enough to see.