Winter Solstice

It is the darkest day of the year here. So dark, I can only just make out my handwriting - sitting under the porch with this wind fair whipping around me.

I slept outside on that grass patch yonder in the photo - the stars were calling me and I lay there letting their cobwebs entrance my vision - a few shooting stars for good luck, then sleep - turn left shoulder, centre, right shoulder - repeat - on the firm ground. At around 3:30am it began to rain and I took my sleep inside but did not sleep.

What is this time of deep dark and death? Of storm and travail, and yet there is something very quiet in the midst of it: A mother hen clucking comfort to her new born chick - the ground microbes resting, quiet too. As I water the greenhouse cover crop this morning my first thought about this axial turning of seasons was shit! I’m not ready for that soon to follow upward thrust of spring following in the coat tails of a turbulent, climate changed winter - if we can any longer call it that.

How do we adjust our human rituals around a changing world - where bird, animal, soil, tree and plant all are undergoing profound confusion as season disappears as once true season? For the plants it is perhaps expected - it is us - the newcomers, the mind dwellers who are playing catchup.