Ode to an ending season.
The view outside my window is magical.
The expansive box elder tree in our garden spreads up and out, sheltering our cozy home. Its branches reach and swell, weaving intricately. My window frames it perfectly.
Crisp white snow covers every branch, thick and thin, gnarled and straight. Tan leaves hang, wilted but serene, dusted with delicate frost – an accessory to their dangling beauty.
The sun is subdued with foggy skies, but still so bright. It reaches every crevice of this beautiful, statuesque, protective tree.
Winter is gorgeous.
I never really noticed before, but I have finally fallen in love it.
Deeply.
Maybe it’s because the year of the wood snake taught me something about nakedness.
Winter is vulnerable.
The earth feels exposed. Everything is cold. Everything is stark. Its rhythm is slow, its invitation is reflective, its offering is rest.
Winter reminds me that I am still whole even when I am bare. Even when I’m not swelling with decoration: fruit, blossoms, leaves, nuts. I am still whole. Always whole. I am still loveable. Always lovable.
Winter is a time of remembering who I am – away from accomplishment and abundance. Winter is not frivolous. It can be harsh. Exacting. It’s a time of (re)discovering intentional warmth. Of cultivating necessary shelter after being stripped down to nothing but our essentials.
Winter is the low canopy of a pine trees, candlelight, and tended embers. Hot tea, hot baths, hot spices. Wool, and fleece, and yarn, and stitch. Reading by low light. Watching films in the cocoon of a throw. Stews and soups and roasts and broths.
It’s also memories. Recollections. The ache of grief, stinging the lungs like a deep breath in -40. The snap of wind across your face. Numbness in your toes, numbness in your fingers.
It’s fogged up glasses. It’s a red, runny, and freezing nose.
Capitalism hates winter. It exploits it like everything – and everyone. It sells you warmth, not for comfort but for productivity. It sells you warmth to keep you moving.
Capitalism severed us from winter’s rhythm, winter’s message, and maybe that’s why so many of us resist it. Maybe that’s why we long for spring, summer, and fall while we’re in the midst of its tender grasp.
Because there is a tenderness to winter. It’s so fucking quiet. It feels unbelievably serene once you look past the snow, the mud, the cold. There is a tranquility there, seducing you to rest. But most of us have forgotten how to let it, how to trust it.
There is a sense of ease to be found, if one has shelter and if one has warmth.
And that’s the problem, isn’t it? Too many of us don’t, and those of us that do, don’t know how to share it.
Winter is when we come face to face with our privilege and our lack. Our bounty and our decay. It’s stark. It’s bare. It lays us out and uproots our hiding places.
There is a clarity to winter that we often resent.
Because Capitalism tells us that a tree with no leaves, no fruit, no product, is useless. Winter tells us a tree with no leaves, no fruit, no nut is ready for rest.
Capitalism hates rest. Patriarchy hates nourishment. Whiteness hates visibility. Winter urges us to intentionally cultivate all three. Winter urges us to just be for a time.
Trunk and root and branch.
And yes, we are burdened. The layers of snow – heavy and dense – can weigh us down. But eventually it melts. There is always the hope of the thaw.
And the snow is asking: what else are you carrying? Are you trying to carry leaves and fruits and nuts while you’re weighed down by me?
Winter asks: what can you no longer hold? What you can shake off, and what can you carry into spring?
Yes, I’ve fallen deeply in love with Winter.
Because Winter has always been deeply in love with me.
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