Looking inward amid solstice’s humbling darkness

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/12/2023 (623 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Stars below, stars above.

Above, it’s the purplish and bulbous swell of the Milky Way, hovering and unchanging, undisturbed by the lower smooth-moving arcs of airplanes and coursing satellites. There’s light in the sky along the horizon, enough to backlight the matte-black tops of the spruce tree fringe, almost enough light to give the trees definition in the dark. But dark, it is — there is something about the dark well away from cities’ light that makes you feel small, rendering you near-insignificant against the sheer size of the sky, and humbled by the knowledge of the breadth of what you take on trust as being out in front of you.

Distance is gauged not by how you can see to reach an outside doorknob or latch, but by the measure of memory.

There’s something oddly satisfying about that, about the fact we have so much unused space in our heads that we’re unconsciously collecting the number of steps taken from every regular here-to-there, enough so we can almost do it without our eyes — hands still brush the wrong place on the doors sometimes, stumbles occur.

But stumbles are always occurring.

To the north, in the small tall-grass valley where the early winter has knocked the shoulder-high sun-bleached white stalks flat, the stream runs and turns, noisy enough to be heard on a quiet night. Daylight will show you there are still small trout holding in the reservoir pool. There are still nightbirds, and small snatches of their songs punctuate the dark. The birds are tucked into their trees, invisible, and you can only imagine the mirth lighting the black beads of their eyes as they play their avian version of Marco Polo with you. They are as close as the twin, now-leafless, tall ash trees, or as far as the other side of the valley. It doesn’t matter; you will not ever find them.

The stars below?

The snow is late here, and the ground bare. The mosses are in control of all corners, in under the trees right up to the trunk-bases, filling all gaps, brooking little competition. Chief among them is the tall sphagnum, each green column — nested tight together with a pattern of divine regularity — is topped with its own distinctive multi-pointed starburst.

Each moss hummock is itself a complex combination of vastly different greens, yet all together, stretched out ahead of you into the woods, it appears as a singularly-toned green carpet.

It’s been a good cone year: the summer has been the right mix of both hot and wet, so the spruce trees have taken every effort to crown themselves with great crowded bunches of rust-brown cones.

Spruce seeds, those small spinning single-bladed gyrocopters, are everywhere if you look closely enough — as are the broken-off cone shells that once protected and held them in place. Even, in the shed, in a small ragged pile under the meshed roof vent that lets the moisture out. They rest, hopeful, in every nook and cranny, hoping to find the right conditions to launch their individual arboreal imperative.

They rest on the moss mounds, nestle amongst the moss towers. They scatter the twin tire tracks of the flattened grass driveway, not knowing what a hard road they’ve chosen.

Days are so short now, the nights so long, that extra sleeping and introspection seem to be required. The hot ticking of the wood stove, the coffee maker’s chuckle and burp; upstairs, I sit at my old writing desk, Frankenstein-ed together from three different and unrelated sections by the owners of a downtown St. John’s antique store.

The house is so quiet that every noise is a unique distraction.

There are seedless mandarin oranges in their waxy cardboard box, the peels curling as you strip them off, so rich with oil your fingers stay perfumed for hours.

There are two strings of multicoloured lights circumnavigating the long-needle pine in front of the house.

Sometimes, I just put on my woods jacket — it’s been waiting on its hook for almost a year now — and go out to cut firewood with the bow saw, happy just to be moving.

Sometimes, I write. The sawing is easier.

It’s good to get a chance to slow down, especially when daylight is so compressed.

To take time to look at all the choices you’ll inevitably and eventually make. The macro, or the micro. To look up, or to look down.

Neither is necessarily right — neither, necessarily wrong.

Stars above, stars below.

Whatever you choose to do as the new year looms, take one small piece of advice.

Don’t delay.

Russell Wangersky is the Comment Editor at the Free Press. This Christmas, he is in a small, old green and yellow house in outport Newfoundland, watching the stars wheel and the moss waver. He can be reached at russell.wangersky@freepress.mb.ca