Winter Gifts

Sigurd Olsen recounts ice skating on a January night out his cabin door across a wild lake frozen smooth and clear as glass. The lake was rimmed with old white pines like lashes. Winter stars floated in the cold eye of the lake. Skating was flying, under the stars above, and over the stars below. Skimming in silence over the dark ice, only the whisper of his skates sounded as northern lights emerged to course their ghostly hues across the vast sky. Ojibway people knew such lights to be ascended warriors dancing wildly, combing their war bonnets through the stars. The ancient warriors danced both above and below the world this night while Sigurd skated between, falling ever deeper into the mystery of the world.

Winter is less dramatic for most of us. The word “drab” may even cross our lips!

Winter, many hold, is a sad pale stepchild, a time of damp enduring, a dark waiting for spring. I used to be dependably depressed in January.  I’ve learned to slow myself to the yearly yearning for rest.  With winter eyes calibrated to more subtle hues and tones, our steps slowed to older rhythms of stillness and quiet contentment, taking joy in bundling up for a walk at dawn or dusk and hearts piqued with alert curiosity, winter opens a trove of subtle beauty and wonders to us.

Dawn is perceptible now, since we awake in the winter dark, well on our way before day comes on. Look, even as you drive. The delicately soft colors of clouds and mists, of light hovering fog over bare stubble fields and wooded knolls, the shades of grey touched with rose or gold, and later the slowly deepening dusk.

For some reason, everybody reveres leaves. After leaves fall, trees are forgotten, ignored. Humble yourself and look closer. Exquisite patterns of flowing distribution are revealed. A lacework of delicate connections, systems of branching rivers, tributaries, streams, all in balance and graceful order. Not all trees are pretty naked, like people, but many are exquisite.   The connection of joints, the angles of posture, the lightness of stance. The impressive strength or clear delicacy.

On a more sensitive level, the energy flow of the tree can be felt. Look, and you’ll see – and feel – where the tree is going, where it’s tending to, what it is stretching itself into. You can almost feel the space it is growing into begin to tremble. As the winter wanes and the first spring energies begin to flow into twigs, long bare willows wands turn yellow and even deep red. Some dogwoods and maples flush with winter tint. I get very excited about this, often stopping the car to pick my way down embankments to streamsides to see the wonder up close and perhaps cut a few stalks for the kitchen table. What surprises will you see today if you look?