Winter Integration

The vitality of polarity in seasons, nature, and ourselves

A note: I was inspired to write this by Seth Hughes, a Youtuber and Instagram storyteller whose work I thoroughly enjoy, who recently shared a short video on a similar sentiment.

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My heart jumps in my chest and a tap of adrenaline turns open in my blood, just for a moment. I’m looking into the eyes of a coyote, standing frozen, watching me from only a few meters away.

She was so silent in the snow, so still in the fog and flat light of dusk that neither myself nor my dog saw her until we were face to face.

It’s always lucky when I see them before my dog does, and luckier still that he is so well behaved and comes to stand at my side so I can put his leash on before he sees her.

She doesn’t mind, doesn’t even flinch when he catches her scent and starts barking and dragging on the leash. Odds are high that we’ve had this same interaction with this same individual before. She seems to trust that I will hamper his protective instincts.

She trots away up the hill a few paces as we move, then sits and watches us. I stand and watch her in return.

It’s only four, but the sun has already set, and the fog has swept down the mountain to envelop us. It’s snowing and she blends in with the mottled landscape of thin snow patches and tufts of invasive flowers and grasses. Just as I was not expecting any other hikers in the park at this time, I’m sure she wasn’t expecting me to still be out here, in her home.

I enjoy the quiet calm of our usual hikes in winter. There is rarely anybody else on the trails, and those I do pass are locals.

The place I live thrives on tourism. It caters to the rich and those that like fast boats, loud music, and cocaine. Folks with big budgets that like to drink wine and lounge in the sun. Which means that summer is the busiest time of year here, by far.

Locals, too, seem to live for summer. They complain their way through winter, griping about the persistent cloud cover, the rain, the snow, even though we get little precipitation here. Extremely little.

Rush through winter, wait with itching fingers until the light returns, the heat, the fast pace, the entertainment of summer.

There’s nothing wrong with summer outright, not at all (although, hypocritically, I do often complain about the summer heat here). Just like there is nothing really wrong with winter. Like the sun and the moon, they just are. Inevitable, natural, persistent.

But I think there is something dangerous about spending half your year every year waiting for the season you aren’t in.

If you are always racing toward summer, scrambling for the next thing, when do you pause? When do you reflect? When do you center yourself? Do you ever integrate your growth this way, if you’re constantly hustling for the next bright, shiny moment? When do you process your life?

Do you keep going, running, staying busy because you want to? Or is it because you are afraid to let the dark catch up to you? To stop and look inward, to take stock, to look around and say honestly, “This is where I am. This is the life I’ve made.” For better or for worse.

Our culture has an obsession with the light, fastness, efficiency, life, summer, energy, the masculine. We value these things so highly that we vilify their polarity.

Darkness, rest, integration, death, the feminine, and slowness - we avoid and even fear. We chase the light so hard we forget that darkness is a vital opposite. Darkness is where it all began, and where it all returns to.

We need polarity, both within ourselves, and without, in our world. As above, so below.

Polarity, cyclicality, opposites, those are the building blocks of the universe. Life and death, summer and winter, light and dark, masculine and feminine, inhale and exhale.

Our ecosystems would not survive with constant summer. They are not adapted to do so. Nor would they survive with constant daylight. Night and darkness give plants the chance to exhale, animals the time to sleep, heal, and recover. Unless, of course, they are nocturnal or crepuscular. For them, night and darkness hold an entirely different world of life.

If we had no seasons, the rivers would not swell with spring freshet after winter snowfalls, nutrients would not circulate within the oceans, birds would not migrate, salmon would not return. The great exhale, the collective slumber - it’s necessary.

I love winter for its reverence, its rest, its natural introspection. Winter is the exhale, the deep pause, the turning inward.

I sleep, naturally, at least nine hours a night this time of year. I knit and read and actually dedicate myself to a meditative writing practice consistently for once. The food I make is rich and comforting, and I sometimes spend hours cooking and baking. It feels indulgent, delicious to allow myself to spend time this way, to nourish myself. To move with the pace of the seasons and nature.

I go on hikes in my favorite places and see them dressed entirely differently. I savor empty trails and quiet woods and my solitude.

I stand quietly on the trail and make long eye contact with a coyote, knowing nobody else is coming along to disturb us.

I allow peace to find me in the simplest of practices, in watching the snowfall, in knowing that I do not have to do it all right now. I do not have to have it all figured out. I only need to reflect, rest, recover. Exhale with the collective ecosystems of the northern hemisphere, and prepare for the inevitable inhale and all it will bring.