Weaving Winter's Medicine

The drum of winter beats, a steady, slow rhythm.

These days the land that holds me is coated in a silvery layer of frost. As my boots find the ground it cracks in a sweet symphony of signs and groans. The mornings are misty, holding the ancient shadows of the formless ones. Looking around the land, it is still. Quiet. Every movement is held in an echo that radiates for all to hear.

I find that the land always shows us how we are meant to be in relationship with ourselves, and the world around us. She shows us by doing. As a mother guides her young into the wisdom of her ways. Here I see her guiding us into the quiet night. The stars peak from the heavens and greet us earlier and earlier. Washing the land in darkness. It is a kind of darkness that incubates. Nurtures growth in its state of rest so it may bloom when the time comes. It is the darkness of the womb. Rich in nutrients.

A necessary initiation.

When we listen to the land, we are guided into our own version of hibernation. Perhaps it looks different to the bears, perhaps not. In this season life moves at half pace. LIFE does. The land does. The creatures do. Yet humans don’t always. We have this interesting idea that we are meant to move full steam ahead in every moment, every season, through every shift, keep the speed. Didn’t stop. Heaven forbid you actually slow down and look at what you are doing. Identifying too deeply with the machine.

Humans are strange. Yet I am reminded in those moments of what true resonance feels like. I find it in looking to what holds me. Often that expression is what is needed in us as well. So I am invited to slow. Slow. Slooooow. Oh, that feels so good. Letting my feet rest for a moment. Catching my breath. Laying my body down in the cold dark earth and being taken by her. Absorbed into the soils, integrated into the mycelium of the land, that encodes in me a remembrance. In these dark cathedrals, I am held in the arms of the ancient ones. Who have grown so old, that they mostly rest now. They don’t move very often. Their form has taken them deep into the earth, where they now hold the role of wisdom keepers. stringing together the threads of the earth. With them, I am reminded of true stillness.

This wisdom is innate. It is how our ancestors lived. In RYTHMN with the land. There was no other way. There was no way to move against it, for we were so deeply interwoven within that web of relating. One was always pulled back into the humble hands of their mother and reminded of what was needed. Now humans have woven illusions of detachment. Found ways to make them feel as though they are separate from the land, and so may move against it. Nothing slows down in the winter. Indeed, it grows faster with the stirrings of the holidays.

But dear one, you are a creature of the earth.

You are a child of the land.

A seed of the great tree.

It is safe to take your place upon the seat of her throne. Be like the mist. Slowly moving through the land in an eternal sign of relief. Be taken by the earth in a sweet laying of your body. Be like the frost, spreading low to the ground, close to the heartbeat of warmth and sustenance. Oh, the nectar of rest pours so richly into our mouths. How scrumptious it is. How invigorating.

How naughty.

To take such space.

To take the rest that is our encoded birthright as the bells of winter ring.

Don’t let anyone see, or they may think you’re an unproductive human.

And we wouldn’t want that, would we?

Here we are again unravelling those stories that take us away from what we belong to. That try to separate us in this veil of illusion from our true nature. The honey of coming home is sweet. The hug of our relatives as they guide us back into their arms is warm and welcoming. They have been waiting.

Interested in some of my other writing? Check these pieces out!

Initiations ~ Gateways of Expansion

Cycling as a Devotional Practice

Herbal Energetics as Plant Mythology

Pain as Catalyst for the Soul