before the winter solstice, which in the Northern Hemisphere is between December 20 and 22, the sun sets at nearly the same time each evening; the same is true for sunrises following the solstice. This stasis feels like the earth is stuck in space because the daylight doesn’t seem to change. While the solstice day itself is the shortest day of the year, at our latitude the earliest sunset occurs two weeks before the solstice and the earliest sunrise two weeks after. On Colorado’s Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, the sunset is always precipitous—one moment bright, the next dim—but somehow today seems already a bit longer than yesterday as the last rays of light drop obliquely behind the snowy peaks and the frigid night begins.
I call the winter solstice the “snowstice” after the December 20 blizzard of 2006 that suddenly dropped two to three feet of snow in Denver, the Eastern Plains, and the Front Range where we live. By most accounts, the snowstice storm was the fourth largest recorded in Colorado history, remarkable even in a state known for its snow. In a blizzard like that, cars hang together like children holding hands in a prairie storm that blows in unexpectedly during the school day, sending families home in a mittened string of oldest to youngest, praying to hit a house or barn rather than wander lost on the prairie. There is no stopping on a darkened snow-driven road, only eyeing the intermittent light of reflectors posted along the shoulder and hoping the tracks in front of you lead to safety.
But after a storm, the sun is brighter than on any other morning as sparkling ice crystals refract the brilliant glare, making winter the perfect time to look at familiar surroundings in a new light. After a snowstorm, I walk the farm, silent on the fresh snow. Tracks left by scurrying rabbits and squirrels cross my path. I spot red-tailed hawks with their snowy plumage and bald eagles perched regally in the bare willows off the creek. Once, I witnessed a coyote stalking a small rodent—a vole or a mouse—on the top of a snowdrift, the predator so intent on its prey that it did not sense my approach. I watched as it tensed, leaped, and captured the animal in its jaws. Only then did it see me; we had surprised each other, thinking we were the only large creatures about on that snowy day.
In winter, we think in black and white, shadows and light, the contrasts stark against a graying sky as fresh snow hoods the upper sides of the tree limbs, white flocking on dark branches. The lengthening shadows of tree limbs across the snow form elegant etchings that capture the frigid outlines of winter’s stately demise. When the sun sits low on the horizon and nothing grows in the frozen soil, the earth itself seems barren. Life is more fragile in this bleak midwinter—tiny creatures scurrying across the bright snow are vulnerable to predators, their dark bodies profiled against the blank winter canvas. Our lives, too, are made of a fragile thing; the line between life and death is sharper in winter, when walking out to get the mail without a jacket risks a numbing chill that hurries us back indoors to the waiting woodstove.
On the first day of the new year, John and I walked in the waning sunlight as snowflakes fell gently on the farm. I scanned the trees for abandoned nests, the fledglings flown long ago; the week before I had found an oriole nest, like a felted mitten, blown down from the branch where it had hung. Crossing the bridge of the middle ditch, we surprised a red-tailed hawk in the boughs of an old cottonwood, then five minutes later were surprised ourselves by a bald eagle flying south and then east in the graying twilight. Walking with the goats to check the dwarf plum and apple trees, we saw an owl land in a tree along the ditch, taking off low from the branch minutes later. As we turned the goats into their shed for the night, we could hear the owl’s hooting through the soft, snowy evening, answered by geese in a long line heading south. We brought in armfuls of wood to warm the kitchen and living room for a quiet evening, a promising beginning to the new year together.
A week later, I’m working in my study when I hear the pair of great-horned owls that have graced the farm for years calling in the trees to the east of the driveway. They’re close, so I throw on a jacket and tall boots to run outside in the snowy dusk. With just enough light to see, I follow their calls, one deeper, one higher in response, to the tall pine trees off the parking lot in front of the house. But by the time I reach the trees, the pair has moved to the other side of the ditch, so I walk up the driveway and head into the thicket of overgrown elms and pines between our farm and the neighbor’s.
It’s quiet now, but I keep walking in the silent woods. Suddenly, I hear one owl hooting nearby, so I start up the bank toward the higher ditch. I wait, but when I don’t see an owl silhouetted against the rising moon, I scramble back to the path. I try to walk softly, but the snowdrifts are stiff and I crash through with a crusty crunch. When I come to a place where the bushes have grown across the path, I part the branches with my hands to step through—and I’m facing an owl in the crux of a branch just ten feet in front of me. The owl is scanning the forest, moving its great-horned head from side to side like a lighthouse beacon. It perches sphinx-line on the pine’s lowest branch, its head thrust slightly in front of its body. I’ve never been this close to an owl before, close enough to see its white face and brown markings.
I try not to move, but the owl sees me anyway. The vast head stops rotating and the eyes stare without alarm, noting my presence with feigned curiosity. “Hello, Owl,” I whisper softly. We stare at each other for a few seconds until its mate calls from the other side of the creek. My owl lifts its wings like a cape, pushes off from the branch, and flaps just enough to glide through the trees. I glimpse its golden underside, and then, it’s gone. As I turn and walk back through the snow to the warmth of the house, the owls, reunited, call behind me.
In winter, we look for any reminder of summer’s glow. Dried grasses caught mid-wave in the snow’s fall stand yellow against the glaring white: frozen rays of sunshine left over from a summer warmth. Long and curving against the snow, they ripple beach-like, the whiteness of the snow like sand on the shore in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse: “. . . and on the right, as far as the eye could see, fading and falling, in soft low pleats, the green sand dunes with the wild flowing grasses on them, which always seemed to be running away into some moon country, uninhabited of men.” Winter’s yearning for summer warms us, like a candle’s flame promises a campfire’s glow, but it’s still winter and the light is still as well.
From winter, I’ve learned the lesson of resting and all the “re-” words that go with it: rebirth, renewal, restore, renovate, regenerate, and, most of all, reflect. Winter is a time at Stonebridge when both the land and the farmers rest. The land sleeps under a coat of white. Small mice and voles tunnel under the snow for harvest remains; red-tailed hawks with their snowy breasts survey the fields for any movement that portends dinner. Inside the house, we knit, spin, write, and catch up on our sleep. We pile thick quilts and down comforters on the beds and wait for our own heat to thaw the flannel sheets. We warm our insides with tea brewed from farm herbs and thick stews simmered from the vegetables stored last fall in the freezer, pantry, and root cellar. Mostly, winter is a time to rest from social obligations and the busyness of our lives so we can slow down and take stock of all we have accomplished. The winter wipes clean the slate of last year’s misgivings, knowing spring will offer us a new chance to re-write our dreams. In the quiet of the farmhouse, we plan again, grateful for another season of farmgiving on its way.
Tonight we walked outside at dusk to find the full January moon, called the Winter Moon by colonial Americans, the Wolf Moon by some Native tribes, and the Old Moon in England, rising over the tree line as something hooted in the cottonwood outside the house. Backlit by the moon, a great-horned owl perched in the leafless cottonwood on a branch high above the garage. But then, the call came again from further away, so we searched the horizon to the south. There, on the transformer tip of an electrical pole, balanced a smaller great-horned, its cat-like ears silhouetted against the twilight. We stood under the first owl and hooted in reply, hoping to see it take flight, but it only stared back unflinchingly with its great round eyes. Finally, the second owl flapped off the pole, across the yard, and over the tall trees to the east. Ignoring our calls, the first owl soon followed in the lunar light and the night was still again.
In winter, it is light we crave as much as warmth. Living according to nature’s rhythms provokes
