Gray and dark winter arrives early for the holidays and stays late on Vashon, insistent that you learn to appreciate its somber afternoons and pallid trees.
It should be easy to get busywork done that time of year, when the lack of sun and slushy rain make the trails less palatable and the creatures of the island curl in to slumber. But to rouse oneself to work — even for an afternoon cleaning inside — requires just the kind of miraculous, death-defiant energy that winter sucks up and locks away.
This is not the time to work, our bodies often say, but the time to rest, and hide, and survive. We may imagine ourselves as the wanderer above the sea of fog, but most days, we’d rather be the black bears snoozing in the den.
Months pass like this, then suddenly it is warm and bright and life has returned. Then another dismal month, then it’s hot and bright and the birds are screaming. Then another dismal month, and then we’re practically back into summer. Spring doesn’t leap into season in this part of the world so much as it lurches across the track, stumbles, gets up and hands its baton over to summer, having set a time record despite falling on its face three times.
Winter, having sufficiently made its point about the fierce beauty of cold, inert things, finally bows and steps off the stage, not to reprise its long soliloquy until December.
It is human nature to pine for what we do not have. We fantasize about winter in those long, hot, sweaty August nights when sleep never seems to come. We fantasize about summer during those miserable February weeks that seem to go without sun entirely. Seasons remind us to appreciate what we have now while we wait for things to be different.
They also remind us that we are composed of the same stuff as the other organisms. Honey bees work furiously and tirelessly when the sun is out, and stay home when the rain sprinkles. They build, build, build in the summer and sleep or die in the winter.
Modern life compels us to work at the same rate, every day, until we either die or earn enough to stop working. But we evolved to do other things, too, like creating art, listening to birds, watching bees and cooking food for each other.
If we fail to do these things, we become like bees trying to work in the downpour, accomplishing little and hurting ourselves in the process.
Spring is here and Summer approaches soon. Find the time for joy and connection, and build your hive so that it will thrive when winter next steps out on stage.
