Today’s accompanying tune: “White Winter Hymnal” by Fleet Foxes
The trees are bare, their limbs exposed in all their twists and turns. The moss hugs the bark, glowing in the middling light. The lichen drips, effervescent, along the boughs. Bald eagle nests the size of small sedans are revealed among trees near the glacial river, their occupants away in hopes of a feast. The skeletons of the forest still very much alive, for those willing to look. For those willing to notice.
The trees garner the most attention in seasons of change. The first buds of spring and the vibrant burst of fall. New life, then death. But in their dormant season — a season covering several months — they are working hardest, preparing for the seasons ahead. Supporting the fungi among their roots and sheltering the organisms living above. They bend in the wind and root amid torrential rains. They withstand. They listen. They wait.
It is not a season of stillness, by many measures, nor is it one of abundance. It is one of subtleties, of moments in time, of gradients. People love to fill these seasons with lights, with events, with hustle and bustle and gift wrap and tinsel. We hate sitting with nuance, hate exercising our patience. We want two-day shipping and someone to tell us how to properly celebrate from a simple internet search. We want to wear the right clothing items, host the best parties, hunt for the perfect gift. We add more, and more, and more, attempting to paper over the discomfort of such a slow season. One that encourages rest, encourages restoration. One that asks us to shed the old and hunker down so we can prepare for the new.
We are not so fortunate to display our shedding in such a grand manner as our deciduous neighbors, though we often create mess of a similar magnitude on our journey of change. We try, we fail, we stumble. Sometimes, we catch ourselves. More often, however, we don’t, twisting our feet on a root or rock on our way down. It is painful and arduous, the act of shedding. We look around at what we’ve built, what we’ve come to know, the faces that have become familiar. We ask if this is what we want, what we need, for the coming season. We know we are supporting others, and our shedding will expose them to the elements in ways they may have forgotten. We try to signal to our kin, telling them it is time for change so they, too, can prepare. So they can turn inward, take inventory, and begin their own process. Some will opt to cling to their foliage, cling to the season before. But winter is not a season of stillness, and the merciless wind will soon rip the stray leaves from their branches because the tree was, indeed, ready.
Without the blanket of leaves, the landscape more readily reveals itself. The distant hills newly visible, the contours of the glacier now apparent. The trappings of the trees obscured the landscape, the vision. The view of the distance. The destination. Watching the hills come into focus after the last leaf falls is rivaled only by the slow, steady ascent above treeline, when the last of the forest gives way to tundra, rock, and sky. It is then the destination often reveals itself — around this corner, or the next, or is it this one? But it is there, and we are marching towards it. I know, because my view is newly unobstructed. At lower elevations, the effect is no different, the magic no less. It is a gift to unwrap, one we wait for all year. One we can see in the quiet openness of slow season, as long as we stop to notice. Stop to appreciate. Stop to breathe deeply the air as it passes through ancient moss and dripping lichen. The same air that passes through the exposed boughs of alder and maple, the air carrying wafts of long-dead limbs now providing a new kind of life, a new kind of comfort.
It is a season best seen through the soft light of flame, felt best through the radiance of the wood stove. A season best not rushed through or stressed about. One that doesn’t require more, and more, and more, but less and less. One that reveals its secrets and shows us the way. One that asks us to shed what we no longer need to make room for growth in the season ahead. It will ask that of us each year, and each year we get another chance to listen, to wait, to notice. To slow down our own rhythms, to breathe in and out in cadence with the forest. To know that what we see isn’t dead. It is merely resting, waiting to spring forward anew. Waiting to show us the fruits of its labor, the roots of its strength, the beauty in its mess.
The trees are bare, and so are we. There is no hiding — ourselves, our destinations, our contexts. The nests are exposed and the lichen is drinking the unencumbered rain from above. The cycle will continue on, as it always does. We will emerge renewed, budding in the growing light of the sun as the Earth titles northward. How beautiful those blooms will be. How warm the return of light.
Here’s to a very Happy Solstice.
- Megan