A Quiet Reflection on the Nature of Winter

 

 Saturday, December 18 (2021) 8PM  

‘A Quiet Reflection on the Nature of Winter’

 Two nights ago was the Big Winter Wind Storm of 2021.  It took me two days to notice the Big Blue Spruce uprooted by the house on the corner, lying on its side, roots splayed in a circular pan shape. A Standing One at least 50 years old, laid to rest. In 2023 it will remain where it lays today barely changed. How slowly the nature of time leans on the living until the moment of impact, especially in Winter.

It seems every town has a place they call the Ponds.  At our Ponds, the cattail bogs, already dried out from an unseasonably warm Autumn, are frozen and suspended in windswept animation, completely still, leaning into the storm’s path as it swirled across the plains. In the aftermath came the freezing temperature of winter’s edge, the motionless landscape stopped in its tracks.  The edge of thick iced over ponds where the water fowl once socialized are hard as a stone and boast the beauty of physics and the slow moving nature of the water molecule at this time of year. 

 True Winter brings candlelight, slow thoughts and the appreciation of small beauties as the frosty air forms our perceptions in crystalline structure on a fragile path to surviving its wonders. This was made most clear in the days we spent in Hope, Alaska, where the weight of the wild crept indoors and hung about like the shadow of a hibernating bear and every day we would steal away for 15 minutes of sunlight, following the brief sunbeam that peaked over the mountains’ edges during a dusky December afternoon. Here the call of Winter Solstice truly beckoned me and the ‘return of the sun’ in all sacredness and desperation. 

 There, in Winter’s darkness, the stillness of the soul has invitation to emerge and listen to the stout survivors of this Season, of ones prepared and dependent on others for survival. Fanciful tales of the holiday season seem to soften Winter’s edge and camouflage it’s true treachery.  Navigating the bush on a wild snowbound trek to American Pass could end in disaster if you stopped moving forward.  An icy oasis of 3 hand carved cabins in the middle of nowhere, on a blanket of white meadow curves, peers up and up and up to a seeming close smooth snowy peak where under the night sun a line of wild gray wolves push against sleeting winds towards a summit unknown to the human mind.  A wood barrel stove crackles and pops next to a trunk of provisions for wayward travelers who arrive unprepared. These haunted reaches harken back to the Legend of the Great Bear Hunter, Harry Johnson (who built these cabins). Even a trip to the outhouse warns of bear’s presence at any time of year.

 On the Kenai Peninsula, Winter has stunted the forests and offered a niche to low lying vegetation, while active Volcanic arcs loom in the distant water like gods. The sea life finds these conditions abundant and prosperous for the living. Sea otters forage and play. Orcas parade the cold waters overflowing with life and grateful in numbers.  They all seem well adapted to living with Winter.

 In these Winters, in a land with no street lamps, scant dwellings, no running water or electricity, where window sills serve as ice boxes, barrel stoves cook your meals and the creatures of the forest are your only neighbors, you learn quickly to glean from the surrounding natural world and use wisely the resources they offer to you in kind. Willow for shaping into sweat lodges, beetle kill spruce lined walls for warmth, old jeans cut up in squares for hand sewn quilts and wild edibles for nourishment during the inbetween times. Sharing in winter is especially crucial. A roadkill moose, bear or extra dried salmon could feed a village if necessary, we don’t need a Pandemic to teach us this.  

So as quickly as winter emerges, it will subside with the mercy of springtime. And we wait with it, honoring caution and stewardship to those moving through it.