The autumnal equinox is a distant memory, and fading fast. We wake in dark, we dine in dark and all the short day gains is rain. This is no time for feeble hearts; we’re winding down the hours toward the celestial nadir. If you’re up for a bare-knuckle version, try Donne’s “Nocturne on St. Lucy’s Day” (13 December):
TIS the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,
Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks ;
The sun is spent, and now his flask
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays ;
The world’s whole sap is sunk ;
Naturally, Lucy is associated with light (lux, lucis)—and her feast is celebrated primarily among the northern Europeans for whom light at this time of year is far more precious (“scarce seven hours” of daylight, in Donne’s England) than it is among us here in lower latitudes. Even Nietzche, no cream-puff, lamented that “Winter, a bad guest, sitteth with me at home; blue are my hands with his friendly handshaking. . . .” And he will be with us for some time—if we can’t exactly take a cold peek into this coming April, we can certainly look back to last February when the Marys River wandered through Philomath for a few days before returning to its bed.
Too much water isn’t the problem, nor is our fabled 100 days of gray. These are our birthrights as Oregonians, something to be treasured along with our disdain for umbrellas, galoshes, and whining blogs posts about the coming of winter. After all, no rain= no snow, no rivers, no skiing, no rafting, and of course, no anything else except perhaps moonlight on rocks with no one to see it. But the dimming of the day—that at least calls for a farewell. Everyone can always use a little more light. We lived for years in northern Scotland (around 56 degrees latitude); summers were pure grace—so long and so bright we had to tape black construction paper over the windows to trick our son into sleeping. There wasn’t much night at all. We took long bike rides late into the evening and came back near midnight with just a few stars showing and the west hills still glowing. Once upon a time in Orkney (59 degrees north, where you can see Viking graffiti in the walls of Maes Howe and the almost perfectly intact Neolithic village of Skara Brae) we observed the mid-summer solstice by going out in a leaking rowboat fishing for mackerel with the otherwise sane teen-aged sons of the woman who ran the B and B: the sun just skimmed the horizon, which was wonderful and satisfying enough since we caught exactly zero fish. The main joy was that we weren’t swept off towards Iceland by the prodigious tides that curl around the islands. Actually, my job (aside from not catching fish) was to watch the horizon and when the current had brought us in line with two distant rocks, we had to pull for home or we’d be gone. So I watched the rocks with particular diligence. The next day (which, of course, started at around 1am) we stuck to land; wandering around the Ring of Brodgar in the limpid light was positively enchanting. The sun seemed everywhere, and tireless.
But each year when December hit you could feel the sun toss in the towel. Shadows started out long and stayed long. Everyone pulled on another sweater, drew the chairs closer to the grate, and hunkered down for what we all knew would be several months of inside time. Perfect for graduate students, of course. But hard on those from warmer climes. A colleague of mine, from Guyana where no one in his gene pool had ever been cold let alone seen a day that brought only 5 hours of light, actually wept at the Spring equinox. And we all pulled off at least one layer of sweater—the world seemed light and lean again.
But that time is not now—now we retreat into the mead-hall, by the fire, out of the rain. And sitting there on late afternoons talking to our dog as the light melts away we are drawn into thinking on other seasons, the passing of other times. Winter is a time for musing on how we ourselves, unlike the natural world around us, have but one spring, one fall. Bede says it best:
“Thus, O king, the present life of men on earth, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, appears to me to be as if, when you are sitting at supper with your ealdormen and thegns in the wintertime, and a fire is lighted in the midst, and the hall warmed, but everywhere outside the storms of wintry rain and snow are raging, a sparrow should come and fly rapidly through the hall, coming in at one door and immediately going out at the other. Whilst it is inside, it is not touched by the storm of winter, but yet, that tiny space of time gone in a moment, from winter at once returning to winter– it is lost to our sight. Thus this life of men appears for a little while; but of what is to follow, or of what went before, we are entirely ignorant.” (Ecclesiastical History Book II, cap. XII)
We are reminded, in the midst of our warm, bright lives or even in the midst of our not-so-warm and bright lives, that we are brief. Look anywhere you chose, and the evidence points to passing. It is often a disturbing thought. We needn’t celebrate it so darkly as, say, Horace (“pulvis et umbra sumus”—we are dust and shade) who seemed to draw positive delight in pointing this out, but at least we notice. I keep thinking about those poor souls living through an Orkney winter at Skara Brae. They must have been the hardiest hunkers in Britain, or what would become Britain after Scotland grabbed in default of a dowry—tucked inside along the surfline, burning the ancient Caledonian pines. Winter must have passed slowly, for all the brevity of their lives. They would know exactly what Bede was talking about, except for the fairly major part about the hall and the windows (look at their houses—Hobbits live in palaces compared to these). But the fireside, yes; the mead (probably); and looking forward to the equinox when the storms of winter are passing, definitely. Too bad they didn’t have Christmas lights—the tiny white ones would have looked wonderful draped along their sod roofs. So off we go into the dark. As I write this, I glance outside at several cords of split and stacked oak. Bring it on.
