A Winter Solstice

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure in the landscape, the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it; the whole story does not show.     - Andrew Wyeth

I went for a ride around the city on my scooter today. The cold was bitter after the warm spell of the last few days. Even so, it was invigorating and filled me with its deep mystery.

Winter is the only time of year that does that for me, fills me up with secrets that have no name. Just walking in it, being part of it, makes me more whole than before. When I was in Alaska the feel of snow crunching under my boots was the only sound all around me. Snow piled up waste or shoulder high from plows long passed acted like buffers to the rest of the world, and in those moments walking this way or that way everything became internalized. The steps I was taking were in me, headed somewhere unknown. Every journey, whether to a store or mailbox, was a journey of the soul.

It was that automatic, intrinsic internalism of the dark months that I fell in love with as a child. Every year they come back, romantically calling to me to step outside and visit myself again. And, like nature’s antithesis to hibernation, I come out of my warm hole and wake up for the first time, every time. The stinging air on my cheeks, the cramping fingertips, the taste and smell of the world all beckon me forward. They pull me out in no particular direction, but with such amazing security and passion that creativity drips off of my fingers and tongue without trying.

Winter is my writing time. It is my time of reflection and inspiration. It is a time of such powerful action that even sitting in a chair by a fire is an activity bursting with energy; energy of the spirit.