10 Weeks of Winter

Lessons of the wet winter…

Water rises high along the river banks in late November. The fields and grounds and potted plants are completely saturated from rain. Rooftop and sidewalk puddles become a fixture of the landscape that ought to be named and added to Google Maps. Meanwhile the moss grows green and happily over tree limbs, rocky outcroppings, curbsides, and along any imaginable crevasse. Patches of lawn that haven’t turned to mud spring up brightly with grass and clover stretching along roadsides and off into parklands. A few leaves cling to the trees, but most stand bare leaving only the evergreens against the blue mountain backdrop. The temperamental skies turn from grey to rainy with occasional sunny days where the blue streaks between long lines of light and dark clouds.

It’s a wetland rainforest in the Pacific Northwest in November. It’s a time for composting, mulching, decay. The wet covers and consumes and washes away. It rots wood and roots. It threatens to flood and it threatens to freeze. Construction in this region uniquely cannot ignore the ever present wet. Many a building has washed away in floods or been buried in landslides during my lifetime. I’ve seen sheds, barns, and abandoned buildings collapse from rapid moisture related deterioration. Everyday life here requires accommodation for staying dry or getting dry.

On our bodies we wear layers. Famous for a causal mentality and a causal style, people from the area where I live do like to dress down (even in pricy athleticwear duds), but it’s actually a matter of practicality as much as fashion. If you dress only for cold, you’ll get too hot and sweat in your clothes by the middle of the day. If you dress to stay cool you’ll likely get soaked or chilled when you’re not sufficiently active. The climate is generally mild with some cold winds or cold hours and some warm parts of the day, and it’s almost always humid. The creeping wet hovers around and climbs onto any bare patch of skin or textured fabric. To dress effectively here you need a good pair of pants that aren’t so long or loose at the ankles that they’ll drag in the puddles. On top you probably need an undershirt as a base and as something to strip down to if you’re too warm, an overshirt or sweater to stay warm when it’s cooler or to swap out with the undershirt if it gets wet, and a good waterproof jacket. That is, you need layers. The temperature won’t be constant, and it may or may not rain at any time. If you get wet from rain or from being too hot and sweating, you’re not likely to dry out without assistance or a complete change of clothes. The wet just sticks to you.

Similarly our buildings need to be able to wick moisture away and facilitate drying. Otherwise things go bad fast and in an irrecoverable direction. And as with all structures, we begin by laying a foundation. If you examine homes in the Pacific Northwest you may see elevated foundations built to set homes above the ever-wet ground keeping them dry and above pooling water. Our foundations, like our clothes, are functional, sometimes stylish, but ultimately utilitarian, and hence a model for what it means to establish a foundation.

What does a foundation do? Foundations:

• Define an area
• Create a boundary
• Support and protect
• Transfer weight

In the first week of my 10 Weeks of Winter my focus will be on laying a foundation. Using the tools I’ve laid out and, keeping in mind both the challenges and structure I hope to support, I will build an enduring base that will hold and stabilize the rest of the project.

Defining an area…

The area occupied by the 10 Weeks of Winter needs to cover a space that will let me raise the bones of the structure I would like to inhabit. What is that structure? It’s a genuine ease toward experiencing and appreciating winter. So how do I get from effort to ease? This happens through slowing down. The space, the area, of the foundation exists as a practice of deep noticing and consciously choosing and moving through my day and my tasks, my pleasures and my discomforts slowly. As slowing down becomes more innate ease will follow.

Creating a boundary…

It’s easier to understand the boundary, for me, through knowing where it has been breached. Like the threats of the wet seasons, the boundary needs to oppose both the subtle (e.g., moisture) and gross (e.g., flood) phenomena that might compromise both the foundation and the structure it supports. Factors and forces like physiological changes, new technology driven customs and persuasions, literal seasonal cold and dark, and unhealthy mental states are the wet ground my foundation needs to separate from my structure.

Supporting and protecting…

Foundations have to be strong and rooted. Another crucial lesson I learned from yoga is that strength doesn’t really come from rigidity, but from anchor points that support subtle shifts and moving into the right shapes to free movement and position in the rest of the body. Building foundations around these parts are built to accommodate for seismic activity. They may be deeper or wider than usual to distribute the impacts of both vertical and horizontal force. My foundation for this winter is grounded in the basic protocols of getting outside, viewing light, movement, vitamin D, intentional breathing, and reflection. Doing the protocols is in itself a foundation to do other things, and having the minimum level protocols to return to creates a foundation that compensates for the times when external forces, schedules, injury or ailments, or other messy parts of life prevent or limit longer or more intense pursuit of practice.

Transferring the weight…

Last and most fundamentally, foundations distribute a building’s load over a wide area. I’m no expert, but what I have learned tells me that for beginner builders the smaller the footprint the more likely their structure will endure. I believe my foundation’s footprint is sufficiently small. It’s a mindset (slowing down) and a collection of short, mostly morning and evening, routines that once done regularly and repeated enough times should create a more robust mind and body that can withstand more, do more, and have fun more in winter.

Digging it out…

This week I’m digging out the foundation and laying the ground work. I’m learning what’s subterranean to my life and establishing something that will support and protect me while enabling a resiliency for everything else that I want to do and enjoy. The wet will creep and seep and steep. And I will stay dry drilling my protocols and delight in the mossy green lined trees while meditating on slowing down.