Living with the change of seasons

I have a friend who a few years back wrote to me in an email, 'we're all doing good here. Our life seems to have its own seasons now.'

I woke this morning remembering how much I try sometimes to resist change, and particularly, the change of seasons. I was reminded this morning, as I rose at 6:30, just a bit before the sunrise, that though we are only in early December we are actually in the darkest time of the year.

December 21st, just a few weeks away, marks the Winter Solstice - the darkest day of the year in the northern hemisphere - when the earth is furthest from the sun. As I deal with my busy schedule - end of semester grading, preparing for a family xmas, and other life and work responsibilities, I paused this morning to remember and reflect on how disconnected I can get sometimes from the rhthyms of nature, and yet, how much my body and soul are influenced and directed by those rhthyms.

My body wants to huddle in bed, read a book, sit and meditate, whereas, my spirit is driven to get to work, attend that conference, go out and run. I sleep more in the winter, and that old winter weight is desperately trying to gain itself on.

Now that I own a house and I heat my house, in part, with a woodstove - I have come to be more and more mindful of the impending winter. Fall also means the time for stacking wood, preparing kindling, mulching garden beds, and generally ensuring I've finished my raking (not quite) and put away other outside items.

Still, this doesn't always mean I like the cold, but each year, I force my body and brain to embrace it.

It is however, hard for me to remember, or rather accept, the change of seasons. Perhaps because I love the fall, and, I had a particularly inspiring fall season, November seemed to trick me in wanting to believe winter won't come. Again, my body told me it was time to slow down. This year, just at the change of seasons and change of clocks, I got a major cold. I was sick for weeks, which is actually quite unusual for me. I know it was in part because the change of seasons was telling me: slow down, take your time, and prepare.

That is perhaps the message for me, of winter. And what, I believe, my friend Lisa referred to in her email to me. Just as spring is planting time of new seeds and ideas, summer the time of joy of new growth, and fall the time of abundance and harvest - winter is the time to rest, reflect, take stock, and prepare for the coming year.

As the daylight retreats and the cold approaches, I hope you'll each take the time to reflect on the changes of seasons in your own life, and remember in gratitude just how much we are reliant upon this earth, and one another, for our sustenance.

I want to close with a quote from a section of Aldo Leopold's 'A Sand County Almanac', which I'm reading for one of my classes:

February - Good Oak

There are two spiritual dangers in now owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnance.

To avoid the first danger, one should plant a garden, preferably where there is no grocer to confuse the issue.

To avoid the second, he should lay a split of good oak on the andirons, preferably where there is no furnace, and let it warm his shins while a February blizzard tosses the trees outside. If one has cut, split, hauled, and piled his own good oak, and let his mind work the while, he will remember much about where the heat comes from, and with a wealth of detail denied to those who spend the weekend in town astride a radiator.