winter solstice – Lofty Minded in Alaska

Five-Acre Almanac: A Few Days After Winter Solstice

Week 21

I woke up this morning to the rumble of snow sliding off our metal roof. It’s 35 degrees out there and is predicted to get up to 43 later today. Right now, at 9:15 am, I’d still need a headlamp if I headed outside, but it’s no longer nighttime dark. The sky is foggy and slate blue. The snow is reflecting the same color but is a shade or two brighter. Water is dripping off of everything that was once covered with snow and the snow on the ground is melting into itself.

As I’m writing this I keep looking out the window and marveling at the contrast between in here and out there. Out there everything is saturated and sloppy. In here we’ve got green plants and walls the color of desert sand. We’ve got a fire in the stove and hot coffee in our mugs. We’ve got warm lights and woolen blankets.

Even though I’m venturing outside most days, it’s the time of year when the bulk of my time is indoors. I go outside to be reminded of life beyond these four walls, to be inspired by the fresh air, the beauty, and the expansiveness of it all, but I return to the softness of shelter, to the familiarity and comfort of domesticity, to slow stews and warm beverages, to books, writing, and music.

These darkest days of winter are a restorative time after the intensity of summer’s non-stop daylight. Understanding this dark time as a balancing force rather than thinking of it as a dreaded phase to endure is necessary for me, especially now that we’re past the winter solstice but still have four months of winter ahead of us. Now I can begin to track my energy’s return in step with the light’s return, even as winter continues on.

Already I sense the slightest change in direction. We’ve gone into the darkness and we’re moving out of it now. For the next month and a half it will be a slow progression, but then it will accelerate. By mid-February I’ll be astonished by how fast the days are gaining light. By March the sun will shine well into the evenings and sometimes, if there are no clouds and the conditions are just right, it will feel warm against our skin. Our friends who’ve invested in solar panels will see a dramatic uptick in their electrical production with both the intensity of the sun itself and it’s reflection off of the snow. In early April the birch, alder, and willow buds will begin to swell, the squirrels will start zipping between spruce trees and our old dogs will chase them, but perhaps not as enthusiastically as they once did. We’ll hear reports of bear tracks in the melting snow. Our driveway will thaw and for a few weeks we’ll have to walk to and from the house in our mud boots.

Some years we still have snow on the ground in early May, but even if that’s the case our garden is planted by Memorial Day. This is something we can count on, something we can plan for, something we can hold on to when winter seems impossibly long. After the garden goes in, it’s full-throttle summer for three months. It’s foraging, fishing, weeding, watering, harvesting, hiking, and camping. It’s hosting company, tending late night fires with friends, dropping dead tired into bed while it’s still bright outside and getting up the next morning to do it all again. Those three months are the yang to the yin of this darkness.

Our coffee table is covered with gardening books and soon the seed catalogs will show up in our mailbox. Already we’re thinking ahead to what we want to grow this summer and considering how we’ll fill each of our garden beds. We’re planning how we want to use our limited time off of work to maximize our summer days. But still, thankfully, there’s time for sitting in the rocking chair in front of the wood stove, time for sipping tea and listening to music. There’s time for writing and reflecting and reading. There’s time to imagine the things we long to create.

Now, a couple of hours after I first sat down to write, the fog is clearing. The low, wispy gray clouds are moving fast on the breeze and behind them the sky is brightening into shades of yellow and pink. I want to step away from my computer and move around a bit. Up until now winter has been about recovery, but now that we’ve crossed through the darkest of days everything feels possible again. It’s a pattern that’s repeated itself for thousands upon thousands of years, yet every time I experience it, it seems new. Every year it feels like a miracle.

Taken just after writing this post. 12/26/2021

*top photo taken from Bishop’s Beach on Winter Solstice

Five-Acre Almanac: Natural Forces

Week 20

All week long I’ve been thinking about what to write for this week’s blog post. I’d assumed it would have something to do with winter solstice since that’s the predominant natural force in the northern hemisphere right now. As is normal though, I wasn’t sure how I was going to write about it. After all, what more is there to be said about the winter solstice? It’s the darkest time of year. It’s been observed and celebrated for thousands of years in one way or another. It’s a time to slow down, go inward, and embrace the absence of light.

I was thinking about all of this as I was sitting at the kitchen table last night labeling packages of a tea blend that we’d put together earlier in the day. We named this particular blend Dandecalm because it is a blend of wild chamomile and dandelion roots and it’s got a calming effect on both the gut and the emotions. And at the time, all was calm.

Dean was relaxing on the couch after a week of fighting a cold and we were listening to our go-to, deep-chill record Where the Spirit Meets the Bone by Lucinda Williams. The house was tidy and comfortable. The Christmas lights added to the coziness. Things were winding down after a full day and we were sipping herb tea and starting to think about turning in for the night and then it happened.

An explosion. Flying glass.

I hit the floor and in a flash my mind covered all the worst case scenario possibilities. Natural gas explosion (we don’t have natural gas here). Random shooter taking aim at us through our back window. Propane tank explosion. Avalanche of snow falling off the roof and breaking through the back window.

Dean jumped up from the couch and saw me on the floor and also imagined all kinds of terrible things. Once he established that I was okay he grabbed a flashlight and headed toward the back door to investigate. Once I felt reasonably sure that we weren’t under attack I picked myself up and started looking around too. Glass shards littered the floor but all of our windows were still intact. Then I noticed liquid dripping from the kitchen counter and the smell of something fruity and sour.

Kombucha.

Fermentation, it turns out, is capable of incredible destruction.

Over the summer we were too busy to keep up with our kombucha, but a couple months back Dean started it up again and made a red currant/ginger blend. The SCOBY seemed weak after months of neglect and we had our doubts that it would work. Still though, he bottled it up and gave it a chance to do its thing. We checked one of the bottles a few weeks ago and it was flavorful but flat, no carbonation at all. We figured we’d have to throw it out but just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

Our house typically runs cool, hardly ever getting above the low 60s and dipping down into the mid 50s at night, but with all the snow we’ve had recently we’re experiencing a rare phase in which our house is insulated and warm. For the past couple of weeks we’ve been staying steady in the 60s at night and going as high as the low 70s during the day. These balmy temperatures may be what launched the kombucha into action. It’s hard to say for sure. But whatever the cause, we are lucky it didn’t cause us bodily harm. Had one of us been in the kitchen when its pressure could no longer be contained within the confines of its pop-top bottle, it could have been bad.

With our adrenaline fully kicked in, we spent the next hour and a half trying to clean up all the glass. We found it everywhere, in everything, and will probably continue to find small shards of it into the foreseeable future.

We laughed a lot, out of relief that it was just kombucha and not something terrible or sinister. We laughed over imagining having to explain each other’s untimely death to our friends and family under such ridiculous circumstances. We laughed over the imagined conversations with EMS had one of us needed medical attention. We laughed because out of all the dangers in this world, our close call was from a healthy fermented drink.

Maybe there’s a way I could tie winter solstice and exploding kombucha together for the purposes of this blog, but my nerves are still on edge and I’m still a little too shaken up to stretch that far. For now I’m just thankful that all the flying glass missed me. Thankful that it missed Dean and the dogs too. I’m thankful that in this world where weird random accidents happen all the time, this one turned out to be nothing more than a big mess.

Extremes

Today, the day after the official winter solstice, we have five hours and fifty-eight minutes between sunrise and sunset. We’re on the gaining side of the pendulum now and by March it will be light until 9:00 pm.

Solstice doesn’t go unnoticed in Alaska. Some people have big parties in celebration of the shift toward summer. Others acknowledge the day in a more introspective fashion. Either way, it feels very Pagan, living in a state where no matter how far removed you might be from nature you can’t ignore the extremes in the seasons.

I’ve had a hard time with winter the last few years. For me, and others I’ve spoken to about the subject, there seems to be a cumulative effect going on. Coping with winter didn’t seem to be so much of a problem for the first decade of my living here, but now I have to actively work on my sanity throughout the winter months.

This winter I’m taking 3000 IU of Vitamin D every day. I haven’t read any scientific studies about its effectiveness in fending off the winter blues, but I figure it can’t hurt.

A few years ago I bought a light box. The idea is that if you start using it daily in the fall when each day loses a few minutes of light, then you will feel the benefits of it in late winter when the days are getting longer. And that brings up another interesting and strange dilemma. Most people who have a hard time with winter feel it the most around the spring equinox, when the days are long again, and the hope of summer is just around the corner.

For me I’ve found that my ability to make it through the winter without feeling despair hinges on the previous summer. In 2008 Alaska had a very cool summer. In Homer the temperature only got to 70 degrees twice. Most days the thermometer hovered around 55 degrees. In July we went camping in McCarthy and had to cancel our hiking plans due to snow. Winter rolled around and I never felt like I had had a summer. It was tough.

I can endure pretty long winters, but if I don’t feel like I have a summer I get cranky, and desperate. Last year we planned a trip to New Mexico in June, the hottest time of the year there, because I was determined to get some sun. I didn’t want to rely on Alaska for a summer. After 2008 I didn’t have much faith.

As it turned out we had an unseasonably warm and sunny summer last year. So between that stroke of luck, or El Nino, and the New Mexico trip, I should be in good shape for this winter. But certain things about myself, in relation to the long, Alaskan winters are still predictable. By late February, even on a good year, I’ll start dreaming about that feeling of the sun’s rays on my skin and I’ll wake up under my down comforter and feel like crying. By that point in the winter I know I’ll have to rely on some inner strength to get me through those last few weeks of winter. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again.

It helps if I remind myself of the opposite extreme that Alaska brings out in me. Every summer I experience moments of euphoria, usually while I’m out on our skiff on Kachemak Bay, or when I’m looking down on the meadow in front of our house and a black bear lumbers by. At those moments, when Alaska’s bounty is all around me and the days linger into the early hours of the morning, I can’t imagine living anywhere else.