Shining into the Dark

I want to be like the trees -- doing the work of winter in my roots so I can rise to the light despite the darkness

*** I pulled This older essay from the archives to add here with edits and updates. ***

The trees are bare now on my walks every day. There used to be some leaves that still lingered, but they have fully sank into hibernation now. I can see my breath. The sun is already highlighting the underbellies of the clouds across the hills to the south, and it is just now after 4 PM. It is nearly as far south as it will lean before it begins to make its journey back to moving from East to West. The days are short, and it feels like I just accomplished the necessary before the light falls behind the hills. Getting in evening walks can be hard this time of year, so I try to do them at the peak of the day when it is both the warmest and has the most light, but today I didn’t get it in till now. The garden is brown and faded, and little is left, even for the rabbits whose tracks keep me company in the frozen landscape of mid-December.

Years ago, I would have never entered the woods at this time of the day during this point in the season. I would have feared her early darkness and what lingered in the shadows. Just as I used to fear the dark days of winter or myself. How do I find direction in the darkness? How do I find my way home? How do I find hope and beauty when all feels frozen and gone? How do I feel the warmth in the cold? Why is winter even a thing? These questions didn't just bounce in my head; they made me run for a period of my life from the biting of the cold and the early setting sun. I found that these questions were also personal to me. Can I face the things in myself that lie in the shadows of who I am? Do I want to feel the things the dark has to teach me about myself, my past, and my future?

I didn't just dislike winter but feared it, if I am honest. I wanted to fool myself into believing that I could hold the golden tones of Autumn. I wanted to live forever in the rainbow of late September and early October. Now, I know not only is this not possible, I don’t want it to be. I love those early and mid-weeks of this season, but I find humility, stillness, and calm in these months when the trees line the hills like skeletal shapes and give us as much light as is afforded to us before the sun sets in pinks and purples and we descend into the night once again.

I have learned now the gift of the woods in these quiet days of late autumn just before winter officially enters our lives. I have learned the importance of their time in my year. Now, instead, I long for them. I love the liminal space of ending the season of transitioning and heading into one of rest. I have learned to find a longing for hibernation.