Nôwitagwôgo: Balance in the Autumn Equinox
On the Gregorian calendar, today is September 22, 2024 and at 8:44 this morning the Fall Equinox was noted in this part of the land, as a transition in the current solar cycle. This is the moment when - as the planet continues the cyclical tip away from the sun - the duration of day and night are equal. The English word “equinox” draws its roots from Old French and Latin for “equal-night.”
In Alnôbaôdwawôgan, this is recognized as “nôwitagwôgo”, loosely translated as the noun “mid-fall” but perhaps better understood through the formative root words as a process of change and relativity.
“Nôw(i)-” is typically seen as signifying the position of “middle” but this is not a fixed, constant reference; it can be expressed not simply as a single point but as a transition through expansive time/space, since it also signifies “long ago, far away”; these are both concepts that we can know as continual and multi-directional. As we travel these ways of being, we are part of a long duration extending in all directions - we are always “in the middle of it all”, more in a spatial sense than linear. The middle or center moves with us. This speaks more about a transitioning, an acknowledgement of connection within cyclical continuity. An image of multiple whirlpools drifting with the river’s current comes to mind.
Certainly, there is are multiple transitions within the manifesting of any process, but what makes an equinox a significant moment is the balancing of day and night, of light and darkness. If we think of our (and All of Our Relations) being-ness as cyclic and connected, seen and experienced together firsthand through the seasons’ progression and repetition, it becomes clear that these recurring inflections of the waxing and waning of light and darkness are balance points, in the middle of what arcs forward and backward in the circling (or even better, spiraling) rhythm of the seasons.
The season that is with us right now is known in Abenaki as “tagwôgwo”, which is translated into English as “autumn, or fall” but which speaks more succinctly as “an ending, or finishing” from the root “tagw-”. This is a recognition that the bountiful outpouring of niben/summer and the heightened levels of activity and change that flow within those moons are slowing down and moving toward the rest and quiet of winter. This brings a needed balance to the Earth, with repose and reflection ensuring vitality for another day, to return again somewhere in the distance.
Bringing these parts - “nowi-” and “tagwôgo” - together gives us a perspective on how and where we are, in the always-changing but always-constant stories of Creation.