We have five hours and seventeen minutes of daylight at latitude 61.2, today on the solstice. It’s six degrees but according to the always present iphone temp, it feels like -9f—which it was yesterday in earnest.
The trees keep arresting my gaze as I write—just beyond the windows, they have turned into corals of ice, ghostly limbs, as if they emerged from the depths of an ice-ocean that receded suddenly. The snow we received over a week ago never shook out of the trees, and with each day of near 0 temps, the rime ice continues to build along their branches, thickening their dimensions, becoming a stronger presence in a landscape that has turned an insistent near-white monochrome. Aside from the sunset around 3 pm which, while orange if the sky is clear, turns the trees and mountains shades of violet and blush.
The last couple of evenings I’ve resisted turning lights on and have been lighting candles—more than I usually ever light—my son and I both enjoying the cozy darkness, firelight, before M gets home and gets anxious about all of those almost-fires about to start. It’s really dark without electric light, I’m reminded again. But I love that the candlelight does indeed draw in company, the dogs, my son, myself, books. I kept thinking of how many nights have been spent like that through generations, how cold, how dark—and how privileged it is to have that combination of heat and light and choice, as long as our heat and power hold up.
And then also thinking of the cold and of people who are trying to keep warm in this city of ice. How maddening it is that with so much heat and light and profit it is still denied to so many who need it. Ice running through the veins of too many.
I’ve been returning to some works that are so often called nature writing, trying to find something that is less from the point of view of observer. I keep stumbling on the ever-present awareness of the writer-as-observer—inner thoughts narrating, observing what arises in front of us or where we go seeking. I want a different way than examining it like an inert patient set before us.
I honestly get peevish about it—so much writing that finds a way in through one subject in particular (e.g., mountains, sheep) or that becomes a polemic or lament rather than an understanding, or a tale of exploration that still holds such fascination in storytelling, and yet is still fundamentally about someone who decides to go on a daring trek of some sort because it is a place so other. And I still love those stories too—but I guess I’m just tired of the conceit.
All of this grumpiness is to say that I find myself wanting to bring the winter in, to make it a domestic space. If the land was thought of as a domestic space, maybe it could be cared for differently. I don’t believe in the separate spheres, of inside and outside, but it’s interesting to think—particularly in gendered terms—how terms like ‘domestic’ and ‘outdoors’ hold such specific stereotypes, which in turn dictate how they are cared for, lived in.
We ended up buying a tree this year because it was too cold (-9f and in the single digits above and below zero for several days) and it was getting later in the month, and the amount of snow we’ve had so quickly would make the typical places we go to find a tree particularly difficult. The tree is somewhat wee and symmetrical, with nothing like the gaping holes between branches in the style of the hemlocks we usually bring home.
But I like to think that in the places my ancestors are from—Scandinavia, Scotland, etc.—people would often bring tree boughs into their home at this time of year—trees, greenery, branches. In a sense, to bring in the winter. Perhaps not as overt as blurring the line between indoors and out, but there’s something instinctual about bringing in part of the land, the trees, have it be part of our domestic space in celebration of the dark, the hope in a return of light. Honoring the winter, the landscape, the home—blurring the distinction between what is beyond or within a threshold.
So with all of this in mind, wishing you dear readers and the lands you live on cheers as the light slowly begins to return tomorrow.
I'd like to lodge a formal complaint that your photos make me Feel Big Stuff.
I'm English, and we're not designed to Feel Big Stuff (beyond perhaps Narrow-Minded Envy Of Other Nations Manifesting As Imperialistic Rhetoric) so this has put me off my stride for the last 11 hours.
Thank you for your apology in advance.
Asta is a mood, cozy by the candlelight is the way to do the northern winters ❤️
Your winter wonderland is beautiful beyond words. Happy wintering dear friend ❄️🎄