This winter was, for me, the most “survivable” winter in recent years. I listened to the earth and followed its lead. In the area I live, the earth rests as it gets colder. Animals get quiet, go into their burrows. The ground stays hard and still. Ayesha Khan’s newsletter, Cosmic Anarchy, had a great post about capitalism being the root cause of seasonal depression, not the weather. We struggle during winter not because it’s inherently hostile to our wellbeing, but because we are forced to be just as active and productive as we are the rest of the year, while nature does the exact opposite. We’re not just part of nature, we are nature. So many of our problems stem from forgetting that simple fact. I’m fortunate enough to have a cozy desk job that is relatively low-stress so I was able to tap into this natural state of rest. But during a hike this weekend, I realized something else was missing.
Last September was my final beach day of the season. In October I could still touch the trees without freezing my hands. Now, in April, it is finally warm enough to walk barefoot, to feel the sun and wind on my skin. Climbing out of my burrow, shedding my winter coat, I felt truly refreshed and rejuvenated. I greeted the earth with my body, and we welcomed each other back. It had been six months without putting myself in direct physical contact with nature. Six months—half the year. After experiencing what I did this weekend, I don’t ever want to go that long again. I’m glad I honoured the earthbody’s need for solitude and rest, but there’s something else that nature does during the winter: migrate.
I’ve been hearing the geese for a few weeks now. They announce their return. Year after year, they often return to the exact same place. The earth remembers. It, too, welcomes them back. If shifts, changes, into a more hospitable environment for them. While around them the trees bloom again, insects buzz, and birds sing. All borne back to liveable—thrive-able—homes. Hibernation is over. The long intermission ended. I called this winter “survivable” because I made it. I survived. But I didn’t thrive. I’ve crawled out hungry. Starving, actually. Asleep in my burrow, I hadn’t noticed the lack.
Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. -Khalil Gibran
It’s hard to recognize our needs. And harder still to honour and satisfy them. The geese don’t question their need to fly somewhere warmer. They trust and follow their intuition. While we humans—forgetting that we, too, are extensions of the landscape—ignore our mental, emotional, spiritual and physical needs all the time. We cut ourselves off from our intuition, our inner knowing. That part of us that is in intimate relationship with the earth. We resist the tug, unsurprisingly creating tension.
I thought putting my toes in the grass and feeling the sun on my skin was a bonus little add-on to my existence. A want, not quite a need. But I’m starting to recognize it for what it is: an integral aspect of my experience as earthbody. A re-immersion into sacred being, the putting back together of something that should never have been torn apart. It is not an act, but a state. Like love, being with the earth isn’t simply a practice but a state of being. We send our love to the earth and it loves us back. It all swirls together. It shows us that there is no object of desire, simply desire itself. We are within it. We are it.
I think of gravity, what keeps us on the earth—literally grounded. It always pulls us back, like an embrace. The earth doesn’t want to let us go. It holds us, keeps us. Always pulling us closer and closer, until we inevitably integrate our physical forms into it. I think of decay. Disintegration—full immersion. The final, grandest act of love. We can never keep ourselves separate from nature for too long. It will always bring us back. We can hibernate. We can burrow. We can migrate. But we always emerge. We always return. And we will each of us inevitably be absorbed within it.
Maybe next fall I’ll follow the geese. I’ve learned to live with winter, but I can’t sleep as long as a bear. We don’t have to simply survive. We’re allowed to ask for more.
There’s love out there—primordial, wild and all-consuming. There’s a call, a lure, inviting us to thrive.
Can you feel it?
Ahhh!! Nature migrates! I love this assertion. Yes, we ARE allowed to ask for more!
I live in Minnesota, and I've often felt a bit of a rub when needing to go back home to visit family in Tennessee, or go on a small trip. I wish I felt comfortable "wintering." But this is a wonderful reflection of the both/and here. Whew, got me again.
I’ve predominantly lived in a coastal environment in a temperate climate where there are no dramatic shifts in temperature between seasons.
I’ve instinctively been in tune with the tide and the season most of my life. I’m fortunate to live somewhere I can observe the sun and moon shift position against the horizon through the season. I also spend an extraordinary amount of time outside. Typically swimming year round and living by nature’s clock because of that.
My observation is that when you live in tune with nature, you are inevitably very much a part of the seasons and cycles.
You can’t do the same activities in the same way year round. Lows don’t come as a surprise, or as something I need to “try and work out”. They’re all part of the rhythm.
My other observation is that people have completely lost this connection with modern lifestyles. They totally disrespect themselves and the environment as a result.
I’m sure all the hurt and damage in the world comes from this disconnection. Humans have become aliens on their own planet and the result is utter annihilation born out of little appreciation for anything.