With drooping, graceful sleeves, evergreen branches are designed with downward swoops to easily shed snow build up, and with waxy needles, moisture stays within instead of being lost to biting winter air.
Winter Wings
The winter woods seem empty but there is feathered movement between the branches. Greys and greens are suddenly broken by a rusty smudge as a chickadee swings close with crackling curiosity.
He is like a lit match in the gloom. So much intensity in one small creature. Winter does not faze the chickadee. Impervious to cold snaps and icy winds, he forages in the same exuberant manner as though on a summer day.
A bright eye watches me watching and I witness the eternal spark of spirit in an adornment of feathers.
Winter Twilight Blues
Ultramarine, sapphire, indigo, cyan, amethyst, violet. Velvety and rich, these colours arrive in that magical moment when the rotation of the planet holds light between the day and the night. It is that moment of the day when we get a chance to be steeped like raw material in this vat of twilight dye.
Mapping Your Winter Star
Light pollution. It's everywhere. We can no longer see the stars overhead, from where we came, of what we are made. The stars stretch out across the bowl of the night sky, turning, charting, keeping time and rhythm but we can no longer see them. Fainter and fainter grow the stars and so too our eyes grow dim as we can no longer see our map and we can not remember in what direction to sail our ship.
When we are outside at night and look to the stars, it allows our own dreams and thoughts to expand, to ignite and to finally coalesce and fall back to Earth. These shooting stars we see are truly our own dreams falling back to us.
So. It is important to look up. Look up when the cold winter air makes the stars shimmer. Look up at the end of day when you get out of your car. Look up when you let the dog out before bed, or look up even if it is just through your window. Pick a star and track it through the month of January. Where in the sky is it? At what time? To reconnect to the movement of the heavens is to reconnect to the eternity of nature and ultimately to reconnect to the eternal nature of self.
Snow Moon Teachings
Snowfall. A time of peace and stillness. Snowfall changes time and space. There is more room, more space for silence to expand. It cloaks and hides the details. Your eye is allowed to range further and there are less distractions as they are hidden under a blanket of white. Your horizon is swept away, flake upon flake until the edges of where you are and where you came from are lost in white.
My best advice is to seek out where woods meet a field, in the country or a city park, it doesn't matter because when you walk out you will be changed by the snowfall.
The trees of the forests will be your guardians.
So.
Walk to the center of that field and listen.
Really
listen.
You won't be the same after.
Welcome to January- The Month of Firelight
Keyword - Introspection
For everyone in the northern hemisphere, we are in the month of dark stillness. Night is partnered with Winter in that eternal marriage of the North. Air is icy and starlight flickers. Our sun, that white star, is pale on the horizon, and makes a low sweep before settling into another night. It is the time of fires, woodsmoke, dreaming and conceiving. We all turn inward with deepening reflection.
How we use this valuable time is up to us. Even in our busy days we need to work with the energy of winter. In the upcoming week, take one moment to light a candle in the evening and check in where you are. Call yourself back, turn inward and reflect. All things have their place in nature and so do you.
Morning Light
If that isn't worth waking up for in the morning, then I don't know what is.
On The Teachings of Winter Trees
I promise that if you bundle up this winter and walk your daily walk, the winter trees will teach you more in this season than in any other season.
A winter tree has presence. Those of you who walk your winter walk, know this. Gone is the soft green dress of leaves and instead there is the starkness of limb and branch. The winter tree has character. This one, a double trunk, this one, a broken leader, and that one and undulating bend that brushes the ground.
Winter trees draw you closer in an intimate relationship. As your eye gazes at their texture and colour, the winter trees become familiar. Pearly greys, hazy greens, slick and smooth, textured and lichened. We come to know these trees, and we come to a knowing of trees and how they move in this world.
And we come to know where we stand, how we walk, and how we move through our small corner of the Earth. Our daily walk with winter trees rehabilitates us to our sense of place. We become engaged to the world around us.
So before deciding that this winter will be like every winter, a time of curling up and waiting for spring, bundle up and greet your winter trees andwalk with them. They have many teachings to share.
On the Topic of Seaweed
I do love seaweed. I like eating it. I like watching it. I like painting it. When it gets windy around here and the trees bend back and forth in a rhythmic sway, I often feel like a tiny fish in a kelp forest. The light falling through the trees is green and blue and the sound of the wind, when it gets determined, has the crash of breakers in it.
There is nothing I like more than painting seaweed paintings, and bringing that swaying movement into the house. A reminder too, that though we live on soil, our planet is a watery world. It is good to bring that element into the home. So although I say good-bye to my lovely painting, "The Salish Sea", I know it has gone to a good home where the denizens feel the same way.
On the Flight of Eagles
Gazing at birds in flight is always a good reminder to let your spirit soar. Watching ravens dip and wheel off the edge of a cliff face is time well spent in reviving the soul. The sunlight gleams off their superb feathers and they shine like obsidian shards in the blue sky.
High above, so very high above, on the edges of seeing are two eagles. Their large wingspan at one with the air, they turn overlapping circles and ovals. And suddenly, they have passed from sight. The business of eagles, at such lofty hights, one can only imagine. It raises questions, questions that explore the vast expanse of blue within ourselves, why do we soar so very high?