I love the dark half of the year. I love the changing colors, brief though their tenure is here in Fairbanks. I love the starry nights, the aurora overhead. I love the snow. The cold. The really really cold. The dark. I love the way the light lingers near the horizon and never ventures overheard. I love seeing the moon at night. I love the way that the dark half of the year invites us deeper. Requires us to seek out the warmth, the community, the intimacy of connection with our dearest ones. Sings to us of the depths of heart, offers a well of creativity into which to dive.
@ForestandFieldPhotography
Today marks the cusp. The transition from light to dark. Today hovers at 12 hours of daylight, and this evening promises 12 hours of stars. Today marks our transition to the depths, as the pendulum of the year swings by.
This year, the cold and the dark brings with it a squirming squishy bundle of new life. My hibernation this winter will be sleepless but full of cuddles. A transition perhaps more profound than any I have conscious memory of. You may have to remind me of this in a couple of months when I am exhausted and on the verge of tears. But right now? Looking ahead? I truly look forward to sitting on the couch in front of the woodstove, raw and open and vulnerable to the tidal pull of new life and new love, shirtless with sore nipples as we figure out this breastfeeding thing, sitting on an herbal compress and letting my husband feed the fire and rustle up the meals. Nothing outside the triad of forming a family.
Equinox is a time of rooting down. Of pulling our energy from the branches and the world to nourish what is deepest and most necessary. What are your roots this season? How will you care for them?