Lingering in winter dark…
I think some people feel about summer the way I feel about my bed in the morning, they want it to stay in it forever. There are places in the world for people who want an endless summer, like California. I don’t know of any places that offer an endless lie-in in the morning, or, for that matter, an endless winter. As week 8 of my 10 Weeks of Winter project comes near to its close I’m starting to think about the times ahead and leaving the winter dark behind. It’s around this time that I always become nostalgic for the long winter night. As strange as it may seem, I’m sad to see the winter dark go.
The brighter times of year have a demanding harshness. The sun burns down and blares in at you from early morning until late into the night. It seems to say, “get things done, the light’s still on, go, go, go”. The darkness of winter nights offers something quite the contrary. They blanket the world and whisper words of peace and rest and coziness. I want to stay there, bundled in the winter night. It’s my happy place. In the winter night I rest wrapped in cozy warmth. In the winter night I dream sweet dreams of impossible things. In the winter night I open my heart to quiet possibilities that dwell in darkness. In the winter night I sleep a long deep peaceful sleep.
Don’t wake me yet from the winter night. It hasn’t gone away. There are weeks ahead, and even in the remaining lighter part of winter I will luxuriate in the velvet darkness that fringes the edge of spring.
Hush…
A quiet fills the winter night so differently from summer. During summer the night is mellow but not still. In the winter as the hours grow late a hush washes over every street and house and car and building and creature and person. Everything somehow knows this is a time to go quietly or to not go at all. I love to listen to it, the quiet. It has its own kind of music, but you have to be still to hear it. It sounds like something very close to you in a vastly large space. It sounds like a cool inhale filling your lungs and leaving warmly back out your nose. It sounds like eyelids closing. It sounds like how someone you love looks to you when they don’t know you’re looking at and loving them.
Starry night…
Best of all, on a clear cold winter night cast your eyes to the skies. The dark black night of winter was made for star gazing. Diamond twinkles fly across the winter night sky in a spectacular array of constellations and winking and sparkling flirty bits of light from some distance past finally reaching our wondering eyes. If you live in a city, leave for an evening. Go out where the buildings grow shorter and sparser. Find a tall hill or darkened grove or wide field, and look up. Remember the story of the night. We are small in the universe, but we live and we try to understand it. And in that we are like the stars, a many and varied wonder all a part of something bigger than we can ever know. Except on a winter night when we may take a glimpse into the heavenly mystery all around us.
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