Útiseta in a Dry Year: Belonging Before Results

The year was dry enough that the creek showed more stones than water. Grass went yellow early. Dust clung to our boots and turned the window sills into a thin film. People started speaking softer outside, as if loud voices might scare the clouds away. When talk turned to “someone should go sit,” eyes found me. Not because I’m special. Because I listen when the land speaks and I don’t turn it into a show.

I said yes, and the old squeeze hit my chest. I don’t like being watched. I don’t like performing belief for folks who want results right now. I packed the way my grandmother taught me to pack for anything that matters. Bread in a clean cloth. A jar of water with a tight lid. The ash staff that fits my hand. Her plain silver ring, worn soft from years of washing and work. I slipped the ring in my pocket for comfort, not drama.

The path to the willow bend was pale and powdery. Birds kept low to the hedges. The sky had that polished, stubborn look it gets when weather has decided to do nothing. I didn’t sing. I didn’t speak big words. I walked until my breath evened out and the restless part of me sat down.

At the bend I put my fingers on the willow’s bark and said hello like you do at a neighbor’s door. No ceremony. Just respect. I sat where the roots made a natural seat above the water line and let my spine settle. This was útiseta, sitting-out, and the point wasn’t to demand rain. It was to remember kinship with place, with the landvættir, the spirits that hold the bones of this ground. If anything else wanted to happen, it could happen from there.

The first quiet is always loud. Thoughts run laps. Worries try to negotiate. After a while the noise burns itself out. The creek made a thin sound, hardly more than water worrying past stones. The smell of clay rose though the surface looked dry. Willow leaves made a soft hush. That was it. Nothing for a crowd.

My pocket felt heavy. I thought about my grandmother and the way she kept bonds. She never treated land like a vending machine. If a neighbor was sick, she carried broth. If a fence fell into the creek, she lifted it so water could move. Her offerings were verbs. No speeches, no claims.

Doubt showed up on schedule. Who are you to sit while people hope for rain. Who are you if nothing happens. I let the questions pass. Belonging isn’t a medal. It’s a relationship you keep.

Then I noticed a sound I’d been missing because it wasn’t on the surface. Water under the roots. A thin run, stubborn and alive, moving beneath crusted mud and reed. It pushed a memory forward. The old field ditch by the north fence line. It used to carry overflow to the lower pasture. Nobody’s cleared it in years. Silt and nettles swallowed it. We all kept looking at the sky as if the only answer lived up there. Part of the answer might already be in the ground, waiting on hands.

A fox crossed the far bank on light feet. He didn’t look at me. That felt like acceptance. Downstream, a barn owl coughed from a dark eave. Not omens to wring for meaning. Just neighbors on their rounds. It settled into a simple request I could feel in my bones.

Leave the ring. Cut a small braid. Keep quiet about outcomes for nine days. On the tenth, ask for help to clear the ditch.

None of that was grand. All of it felt real. The ring mattered because it tied me to a line of kept promises. The braid mattered because I’d feel the absence with my own fingers. The silence mattered because it would starve the part of me that wants to manage other people’s expectations. And the work with neighbors was the point.

I took the ring out, held it in my palm, and told the truth in a low voice. I’m tired of proving myself. I’m tired of waiting to be told I belong. I’m here, and I’ll keep this bond. I set the ring on a flat stone in the willow’s shade and pressed my fingers to it. I clipped a small braid from behind my left ear and tucked it into a pocket of roots. Then I went home and started the count.

Nine days of silence about outcomes felt simple and hard at the same time. People asked, because that’s what people do. Any change, they said. I kept it plain. I went and sat. I’ll go again. We’ll see. It felt strange to step around the usual “signs” talk, but that was the discipline. This wasn’t seiðr for a crowd. This was keeping friðr, peace, with the place I live.

I returned on the third and sixth nights. I greeted the bend by name. I sat long enough for the noise to burn off. I listened for the thin run under the roots. I didn’t sing varðlokkur, the old spirit-calling songs. Calling wasn’t needed. Relationship was. I brought what fits a dry year and a working life: bread broken small, a splash of beer into the soil with a quiet “ár ok friðr,” a good year and peace. I lifted a limb from a choke point the way my grandmother would have done. Verbs, not speeches.

By the eighth night I felt less like a visitor and more like a local again. Doubt still spoke up, but smaller. Not gone, just not in charge.

On the tenth morning I knocked on doors. Nothing mystical. Just the truth. The old ditch is choked. If we clear it, the ground might move water better when it finally comes. Bring a shovel if you can. If you can’t, bring water and a joke. People came because the ask was honest and the work was clear. Three elders who remembered the ditch before the nettles took it. Two teenagers who’ve never seen a good flood and wanted to be where something was happening. A neighbor with a bad knee who set a stool in the shade and kept time with stories while we swung tools.

Before we started, I set a bowl with a heel of bread and a little beer near the ditch mouth and spoke to the landvættir. Thank you for holding us up. We’ll keep our side. We want good flow, for us and for the small ones. Then we worked.

The ditch revealed itself in pieces. First a sag where the grass changed color. Then the edge of old stones set by hands gone to the mound. Once the first clog broke, it was like a slow zipper. Mud gave to leaves. Water darkened the soil and took a path. Some sections had collapsed. We cut new lines that nodded to the old. One elder tapped his cane at a spot and said, it turns here toward the lower pasture. He was right. The spade tips found a buried curve like muscle memory.

Nobody made speeches. Somebody laughed when a boot came free with a wet pop. Someone cursed when a blackberry cane bit skin, then grinned when a sleeve appeared to wrap it. Ordinary village sound. The kind that makes a place feel like itself.

By afternoon a thin run had formed, stubborn and quick, feeding the creek where it needed help. Not a miracle. A mending. We stood there with shovels and watched water take the line we’d opened. I felt the same thing I’d felt under the willow, only bigger because more hands were in it. Belonging doesn’t arrive like applause. It settles when you keep oaths no one but your grandmother and the land asked you to keep.

That night I went back to the willow. I didn’t bring the ring. It wasn’t mine anymore. I brought a small bowl of broth like my grandmother would have carried to a sick neighbor. I set it by the roots and said thank you out loud. Thank you for the shade and the small room you make on hot nights. Thank you for water that moves at all. “Ár ok friðr,” again, because it still felt right. A wish and a promise at once.

Sleep came easier after that. Not because the sky opened. A day later a soft shower passed through and made the dust lie down for a bit, but that wasn’t the point. I slept because my hands knew what they were for again. When doubt tried its old line, who are you to sit, I had an answer that didn’t need to be loud. I keep bonds. That’s who.

Word about the ditch spread, and opinions walked with it. Some said it wasn’t spiritual, it was just yard work. Some said a bigger blót would have brought rain. I didn’t argue. There’s a time for big rite at the vé with song and full offering. This wasn’t that. This was seiðr in the small sense: the tying and untying of what’s stuck, the listening before the doing, the doing before the claiming. Relationship before result.

A week later a woman from up the lane brought a loaf and asked if I’d look at their fence where it meets the creek. A beam had leaned there since spring. Now that the ditch was open, she wondered if lifting it would help their side too. We didn’t make it a ceremony. Two of us waded in, counted to three, and raised the beam slow. Water moved. She smiled. I smiled back. That was the whole spell.

The work kept paying in quiet ways. The teenagers came back on their own to clear a second stretch. The elder with the cane brought a jar of rusty nails he’d pulled from rotten planks so nobody’s foot would find them. At the store, a man who doesn’t talk much dropped a bundle of new gloves in my cart and walked on. No fanfare. Just proof that friðr was holding.

When I finally told the story, I told it plain. I sat. I listened. I was asked for a price that mattered, and I kept it. The land answered, not with theater, but with a path we could take together. My hamingja felt steadier, not because I impressed anyone, but because I lined my actions with my words and let the web hold some of my weight.

Don’t ask for rain; instead, recall your connection to this earth. Step out of the circle, remove the block, seiðr needs no more. Ár ok friðr… let your hands speak before your words. Belonging is earned through honored oaths, not symbols. If you want the teaching and the journey together, Patreon is where I’m keeping it. Stories like this, plus the facts, sources, and step-by-step work.