Winter awareness, solstice and soulful books
Can we give ourselves permission to experience winter as other mammals do, with more rest and a quiet reset?
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WINTER SOLSTICE IS HERE, and I can feel it in the need to sleep more and the desire for comfort foods like hot soup. Depending on where you live, you may feel the urge to cozy up indoors with a movie, book, or a warming fire. Others might want to take advantage of bracing winter sports or the desert’s temperate hiking season.
In early human groups, winter weather brought a time to rest and regenerate. It was a period to mend nets or spears, fashion fur clothing, and sleep and dream more. Winter may have been the time early humans created artistic cave paintings, started inscribing basic runes and symbols, or developed chants and song. Winter must have pushed humans to develop their inner life.
Historically, the winter months were also hungry months when food sources were less available for all species. The full moon in January is called the Wolf Moon for the sound of hungry wolves baying. February’s full moon has been called the Hunger Moon.
Times of enforced slowness, times of waiting, or times with more darkness can be productive in their own ways.
All light arises from darkness, including insight, creativity, vision, and possibility. The luminous darkness is the presence and receptivity through which we also access light.
Deborah Eden Tull, Author
In our modern world, with artificial lights, heated buildings, engineered clothing, and year-round food cultivation, we tend to treat the days as a homogenized sameness, even though our body still responds to seasonal changes.
If you can, give yourself permission to experience winter as other mammals do, with a quieter schedule and additional rest.
The challenges we face now require an expansion of our imagination, creativity, and connectivity. Winter can provide the time to reset and nurture your inner landscape.
Speaking of other mammals, how many of us can identify which mammals in our home area hibernate in the winter? I don’t know the answer for the animals locally, so I decided to look into hibernation, a fascinating adaptive survival mode.
Can you name five ways animals survive winter or harsh conditions?
Cold weather prompts some animals to hibernate, a survival strategy that usually lasts four to seven months. During this time, they may undergo physiological changes far deeper than just sleep, and metabolism may slow down by as much as 95%.
It’s not just the cold that causes a need to hibernate. It’s also the lack of food sources during winter months and the difficulty moving through snow or the need to avoid the rigors of migration to far-away places.
I was surprised to see the many variations on hibernation.
Full hibernation is a complete physiological change that lasts for months. It reduces the animal’s body temperature, changes its breathing to require less oxygen, and alters the body’s digestive and waste removal process.
Brumation is a state of reduced activity for reptiles and amphibians. Lizards can’t move much in the cold, so they become inactive until the sun warms them.
Torpor is a lighter form of hibernation that is shorter and where the animal may wake up periodically.
Denning includes a period of sheltering in a hole, cave, or protected place.
Aestivation (also estivation) is an animal summer dormancy that occurs to avoid high heat or lack of water. It may involve going underground to keep cooler. Some frog species estivate in arid climates by wrapping themselves in a mud cocoon and hibernating for years until rain occurs.
The natural world has many ways to adapt and survive in harsh weather. A number of species are pushing up against limits for their adaptability though, with the growing extremes of climate. That’s where we come in. Every fraction of a degree of warming we can prevent will help countless species.
Here’s a winter question for weather-curious people.
If days are getting longer, why doesn’t it warm up faster?
Winter solstice on December 21, 2022, is a pivot away from the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere and a welcoming of the return of light as days gradually lengthen. But if days are getting longer, why don’t the temperatures start warming too? January is one of the coldest months of the year.
How do we explain this contradiction? It comes down to two words: the ocean. Water covers 70% of the Earth’s surface, and it stores most of the sun’s solar radiation received on Earth. Surface ocean currents slowly release this stored heat as the air temperatures drop. This lag in ocean chilling is responsible for the colder temperatures arriving later in January rather than December in the Northern Hemisphere.
Books for winter reading
Does the cold season keep you indoors more or tempt you to read? If so, here are some thoughtful non-fiction books to enliven those longer evenings. I love books that explore a subject deeply and show how it’s relevant and interrelated with the wider world.
Sisters of the Earth, by Lorraine Anderson
I picked this one up at a National Park bookstore. It’s an anthology of essays and poetry by women writing about nature from a very personal perspective, and spans over a hundred years.
Entangled Life, How fungi make our worlds, shape our minds, and change our futures. By Merlin Sheldrake
This book can be mind-bending at times. Do these non-plant and non-animal fungi really do all that? It’s a mixture of science and stories that will forever alter your worldview about mushrooms and fungi.
The River You Touch, Making a life on moving water, by Chris Dombroski
The author is a poet, Montana river guide, and father of three young children. He weaves his luscious prose into a non-fiction memoir that celebrates a Western landscape, its rivers and life. Some phrases from reviewers: “heartfelt and gorgeously written,” “how deep knowledge and love of a place shapes us.”
The Narrow Edge, A tiny bird, an ancient crab, and an epic journey, by Deborah Cramer.
A true modern odyssey of a woman who follows a tiny bird’s migration over thousands of miles. “I have a compass, GPS, and radio,” [Cramer] writes. “The birds have—what? By the end of this journey I am more in awe than when I began.”
Ways of Being, by James Bridle
British “writer and artist James Bridle considers the fascinating, uncanny and multiple ways of existing on earth. What can we learn from these other forms of intelligence and personhood, and how can we change our societies to live more equitably with one another and the non-human world?”
If you get a chance to read any of these books, I’d love to hear your thoughts on them.
Happy winter solstice to you! 🌲☃️
Schedule change— I’ll be taking a writing and publishing pause while spending time with family around the holidays. Mother E will return Sunday, January 15, 2023. If you miss it, feel free to visit the archive of 50 newsletters published in the last two years. Here’s a winter-related essay from a previous December, Bringing the Light to Winter.
I like to hear from readers. Have you read any non-fiction books that helped you understand the natural world in a new way? Please share at the the button above, or leave related comments. Stay well and stay connected to nature. 💚
Robin Applegarth
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Thanks for your comments Patrick. You know cold better than we do in California.😉Dombowski is a rising author to watch. Enjoy his latest book!
I'm becoming a bird nerd and loving it!