Last week I was walking through a woodland on the edge of a bubbling Dartmoor stream. I noticed it first through the soles of my feet – something extraordinary. The ground littered with acorns, more than I ever remember seeing. A thick carpet, rolling into every dip and hollow of the woodland floor, and abundant in the branches above.
This is a mast year. A year when oak trees pour their energy into an abundant crop, producing more acorns than squirrels, deer, or jays could possibly eat. Standing there I was reminded of how nature works in cycles – and how much we as humans can learn from it if we choose to pay attention.
The rhythm of the mast year
Oak trees like these English oak (Quercus robur) don’t produce such abundance every year. Most years, the crop is modest, even sparse. But every five to ten years the trees invest heavily in reproduction, flooding the ecosystem with food and opportunity. By overwhelming the acorn-lovers (squirrels, mice, woodpeckers, jays), some acorns are left to germinate and grow. But there’s a deeper truth – mast years are only possible because of the quieter years in between. The tree must rest, recover, and store energy before it can produce such a harvest.
Our own cycles of energy
As I walked on I thought about how our lives and work mirror this pattern. We too have ‘mast years’ – those times when creativity, energy, and productivity seem to overflow. When new ventures, ideas, or personal growth come in waves, scattering seeds of possibility. Yet perhaps we imagine every year must be bigger and better than the one before, a mast year every year.
We cannot sustain working and living like that all the time. The years in between matter just as much:
- Time to rest and gather our strength.
- Time to nurture our roots using practices, relationships, and values that sustain us.
- Time to reflect, plan and prepare, even when little appears to be happening on the surface.
Coaching with the seasons in mind
In Nature Based Coaching, we can help clients notice and name their own cycles of energy. Some useful questions might be:
- What season are you in right now? Sowing, growing, harvesting, or resting?
- What are your energy levels like, and where might they need to be conserved?
- How can you embrace quieter periods, rather than rushing to force abundance?
Holding Our Own Energy as Coaches
That walk among the acorns was also a reminder to me as a coach, and as a human being. It can be easier said that done to rest and slow down. But it is worth practicing, with the support of a coach. Framing slower periods as a necessity, rather than a luxury, can help us think in more helpful terms of energy use and conservation, cycles, and seasons.
Holding space for others requires its own cycles of giving and renewing. We too need rest, reflection, and replenishment if we want to show up fully.
Like the oak tree, we can trust that abundance will return when the time is right—if we allow ourselves the rhythm of the seasons.
A reflective practice
Think back to a time when you were in your own mast year. What allowed it to happen? What quieter season came before it? And how might you give yourself permission, now, to enter whatever season you are truly in?