Tomorrow
night is the Winter Solstice, and as such I am at the zenith of this year’s Yuletide
Journey, coming to rest in the crèche of my Heart in the darkness that this
night portends; awaiting revelations and potential epiphanies. As chance
would have it, I’ve been able to go out for short walks on four different
nights this month after work. On three of these wintry jaunts, I have
gone down the rails-to-trails project near town that carries me off into landscapes
long imbued by poetic fantasies. _I have walked down to the arche of all my imaginings of the family
known as The Whittiers, and come back with runes of poetic fascination.
Each
of these after-work saunters has lasted just over an hour, going there and back again, yet they have silenced my being-in-becoming,
drawing me on toward precipices of poetic luxuriance. I have journeyed creatively
into earthen Silence & Solitude; and then come home more deeply centered than
I was when I 'left town.'
Wandering
out, just beyond the pale of the street lights as the sun has vanished behind
cloud-banked horizons, I’ve found my way into a vista where the natural
seclusion restores my senses; solitude refreshes the soul. I have been alone
on the trail, most nights; mine being almost the only feet to have left tracks
in the newly fallen snow; besides the evidence of raccoons, squirrels and
various winter birds. Alone without being 'lonely;' this is the goal
toward which Solitude draws us. To be quiet in the stillness, external
and then internal, without distraction or angst; this is the state toward which
an authentic experience of Silence draws us.
While
Silence & Solitude can be experienced at any tide of the year, I often
associate them most profoundly with the Winter Solstice; with the denuding of
the senses that Winter brings and with the deprivations that cold and snow
impose on our activities. To be out walking in the Winterwood is to
experience the 'absence' of the sounds of Nature that captivate us at other
times of the year—e.g., the rustling of leaves and the singing of the birds
that go south for the Winter. To be out on the hoof in this darkening
tide of the year is to experience the vibrant colors that characterized the Summer-
and Autumnwood gone from the world. Yet
different colors; a refreshingly grey—white—brown palette – replaces them. Each season has its own characteristic
colours.
I
walk along the rails-to-trails project – once a spur of the Pennsylvania
Railroad – and marvel at what I do hear:
the burbling of water, the crisp sound of the snow being crushed beneath my
feet; all amidst an ‘openness’ made possible by the lack of leaves on the
trees. The more ‘muffled’ acoustics of a summerwood walk are gone. I am in 'the Open;' and yet the darkness
encompasses me about as twilight fades and night commences its reign. Tomorrow night is the longest night of the
year.
Yesterday
afternoon I went out to a local park where they have a holiday light
display. Thousands of lights! I walked around the lake in the silence of
the afternoon, and felt grounded and resourced in the solitude I discovered
there. I saw only one other person in
the park before I left at 4 PM. There
were ducks and geese on the lake, and in the dimming light of the late afternoon
I felt almost haunted by memories of experiences I’ve had at that park over the
years, with friends and with my parents.
It was that strange experience I sometimes have (perhaps you do, too)_
of being ‘in company’ in my imagination while wholly alone in the silence of a
seemingly lonesome place. Yesterday, the lights of the various displays were slowly
coming on as I got back to the car; it was an almost eerie animation of the
place that spoke of even deeper experiences to come as the Yule comes to a
close, once more.
This,
for me, is what Winter Solstice is about. I experience it as a time to
embrace the experience of darkness and enter into Silence & Solitude in
ever more profound ways. The experience of the natural world at this tide
of the year is conducive to the nurturance of Silence & Solitude. If
we allow that the bleak beauty of the Winter may be reflected within us, and if
we let the hubbub that normally characterizes us wash quietly and
effortlessly away, it becomes possible to come to rest; a contemplative state, naturalistically
considered—in which a restoration of our bodily and spiritual energies becomes
possible.
Returning
from such walks, I oft find I want to remain in the quiet, so I sit near the
Yule Tree and employ the old fashioned looking LED lights in which it is decked
as a focus for imaging and meditative centering. Quieted within, I can
then return to work and the world the next day, as well as imagine the next
year's poetic and spiritual journey and where I might be led, as the quest for
wisdom continues. So be it.
May you have a Merry Winter
Solstice, and a blessed year to come!
