Alchemy, Metal Season, and the Art of Transformation
Mention alchemy and most people picture a robed figure in a candlelit workshop, hunched over a bubbling flask, trying to turn lead into gold. The picture is a little silly,...
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The Five Elements
This blog explores the Taoist Five Elements—Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water—as a living map for aligning with the seasonal rhythms of nature and life itself. By observing natural cycles of...
Beauty Without Perfection
The first weeks of autumn tend to be about letting go. The trees make it look easy, and most of what gets written about Metal season follows their lead, toward...
How Tea Is Made: Seven categories, and what separates them.
Every tea in the world comes from the same plant. What separates a Longjing from a Dianhong from a fifty year old sheng is what someone did to the leaf...
The Descent into Metal and What Time Does to a Tea
Autumn belongs to Metal, and the year has tipped into its dark half. The light keeps shortening from here, the cold settles in, and everything that spent the summer reaching...
Letting Go of What Isn't Essential
Earth season is closing. On September 22 the light and the dark are equal, and after that the year belongs to the dark half. We move fully into Metal. Everything...
Method, Element, and Heat
Notes from Vessel: A Gathering of Clay, Craft & Ceremony. Part Two. Part one closed on a question to put to a piece of teaware: what tea wants to be...
What a Vessel Does to the Tea
Notes from Vessel: A Gathering of Clay, Craft & Ceremony. Part One. Over the first weekend of Vessel, Colin taught five classes. Different subjects, different teas, different rooms of people....
Feed Yourself the Way You Would Feed Someone You Love
The body understands Earth season before the mind does. By late summer, something has already started turning inward. Quietly, in the small decisions of the day. The desire for warmth....
Nourishment, Stability, Belonging
Way of Tea · August 18th 2026 Late summer sits differently than the other seasons. It is not the urgency of spring or summer's outward heat. It is full without...