December 19, 2014

Sometimes my heart can’t quite keep up with all the holiday cheer. My dear friend is facing a serious illness, I miss my son, and so much of the world’s news is horrific. All of the neighborhood’s inflatable snowmen and strings of lights can’t seem to brighten my spirits.

It’s the winter solstice I must face, which in North Florida is often the coldest, darkest and rainiest day of the year.  But the solstice will never disappoint, because it’s not a human-made-and-marketed holiday. The earth sets the rhythm of dark and light for us, and creates the larger context that holds us, whether we are aware of it or not.  And right now is the time to face the dark.

Yet it’s a mistake to do it entirely alone. Yesterday, when I couldn’t quite shake my sadness, I knew to go to the Refuge. I didn’t know exactly who would be there, but there they were: avocets and dowitchers and dunlins, some sandpipers to make me fret (since I had forgotten to bring my spotting scope), every kind of egret.  I squatted at the edge of the marsh among them, and said their names.

And then in the Lighthouse Pond: a glory of wintering ducks. Those shovelers and redheads and ruddy ducks and all the rest would not be here in North Florida were it not for the shortened days and the frigid weather in the far north where they breed.  The low angle of the solstice sun lit up the powder blue bill of the lesser scaup, and warmed the emerald and chestnut-red face of the teal. It spotlighted the prissy shallow dives of the mighty canvasback duck.

I knew myself to be in the company of beauty, and my grief opened to gratitude.  May your solstice be equally memorable.