Woods Wanderer

Today is the shortest day. Today winter begins. As someone who loves everything green and growing, not to mention daylight, I find this to be a tough time of year. I am not alone in this.

I believe that the holidays were invented to help us cope with the darkness, and to ease the transition into the cold season. Hope, joy, love, and everything warm and bright indoors – we certainly make the best of things, don’t we? I have lights on my house, a decorated tree in my living room, and holiday cards on full display. Yeah, I too take the Winter Solstice seriously.

The other day I went for a walk in the woods. There was enough snow on the ground to cover up the starkness of the landscape and the snow-laden boughs of conifers were easy on the eye. I was chilled at first but exertion got my blood flowing. After a while I started thinking: “This isn’t so bad.”

Oddly enough, winter is the hardest to take when we are struggling to get from our homes to somewhere else by car or some other mode of fast transportation. On foot, in the woods, it’s not so bad at all.

While sitting at home and listening to weather forecasters, it seems like disaster is imminent. The forest tells another story: temperatures rise, then they fall. Storms come, then the sky breaks open. And the seasons cycle round and round.

Winter is nothing to get all stressed out about. Worst case scenario, stay off the road. There’s plenty to do indoors. And when the walls start closing in, go for a walk. If nothing else, it’ll help you appreciate what your furnace or fireplace provides.

Tags: light, natural cycles, walking, winter solstice

The urge to further explore the cosmos is coming back to me. When the night sky is clear, I can’t help but look skyward and marvel at the universe. Not long ago, I pulled out my binoculars and revisited the Andromeda Galaxy. More recently, I went to the Astronomy Picture of the Day website and checked out the incredible photos there. I think it’s time to crack open some cosmology books, dust off my telescope, and let the cogs in my head whirl about once again.

I reviewed my cosmos manuscript the other day, clicking into it after a short round of writing. What I found there got me thinking. It’s pretty good for being an early draft. Why not finish it?

I abandoned the cosmos manuscript years ago. At that time I couldn’t justify putting a year of work into something that would be difficult to market. After all, I’m no expert in the field. But I have a passion for the subject and that’s reason enough to finish the book. Besides, I am ready to have my mind blown again.

Cosmology is not for the faint of heart. The wild universe, hidden in plain sight, undermines any complacent understanding of things. Do not go there if you like having your feet planted firmly in some comfortable worldview. I have delved deep into the matter only to have my head explode, time and again. It’s intellectually thrilling yet exhausting. If you have ever pondered the big bang, red shifts, black holes, or dark matter, then you know what I’m talking about.

Unlike most people with a scientific bent, I do not look skyward and say, “God is dead.” On the contrary, I find in the night sky affirmation that we live in an ordered universe, that it is not all chaos and random occurrences. One look at a spiral galaxy is proof enough to me that some organizing force is at work. Gravity alone defies chance.  But what is really going on out there? Like I said, the subject isn’t for the faint of heart… or the simple minded.

Tags: astronomy, cosmology, metaphysics, nature, religion, science

Now it is December. My dog Matika and I walk the Rail Trail early in the morning, leaving tracks in fresh snow beneath a dull sun. Seems like I was doing this not long ago, but the snow geese urgently heading south make it clear that nearly a whole year has passed since I last saw the sun this low in the sky. This passage of time makes me shudder. As I grow older, the years seem to slip by faster.

The trail crosses a small brook partially iced over. In due time, this brook will be completely covered with snow and ice. And yet it will still flow – a muffled trickle reminding anyone who pays attention that the passage of time is relative. Compared to my dog, I live a long life. Compared to this brook, my existence is only the blink of an eye.

The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that we can never step in the same river twice. While squatting along the edge of the brook, I ponder this. The stream before me rushes incessantly, never pausing. I constantly change, as well, in much more subtle ways. So does everything around me. The whole world is in flux –  the entire universe for that matter. Nothing stands absolutely still.

I continue walking the trail, following a set of tracks laid by someone else a day or two before. When the trail clears the trees and enters a field, I notice that a snowdrift has obscured those tracks. In due time, the boot prints that I press into the snow will also fill in or blow away. Then there will be only my memory of having been here.

These are the reflections of an old thinker, of course. The young live in the present, as do the thoughtless. As I walk the trail, countless others prepare for the holidays, feeling the press of time in a different way. For them, December 25th is all that matters, and the rituals surrounding that day seem eternal. Nature reminds us that they aren’t, of course. Ah, well… I’d better start my Christmas shopping soon, anyway.

Tags: change, flux, Heraclitus, seasonal change, the passage of time, time