Welcome to Winter

I bet you know today is the first day of meteorological winter. Locally, Winter solstice occurs on Saturday, December 21, 2024 at 3:20 am CST. We’re three weeks from the shortest day / longest night in the Northern hemisphere and we’ve already had temperatures in the single digits and wind chills below zero. Snow and flurries come and go. It feels more like January or February than late November and early December. I wonder what the rest of winter will bring. Maybe the persistent cloudiness will relent?

We now have some poinsettias joining the candles decorating the house for Christmas. Sometime this coming week I’ll hang the outside lights and look in our woods for a tree. We’ll celebrate the Daughter person’s birthday later this week and, as always, our Son’s birthday on Christmas afternoon. December is just full of family activities. We hope the weather will be cooperative.

squirrel in December pine

Photo by J. Harrington

Local marshes and small or shallow ponds are ice covered. Remaining waterfowl are concentrating on the larger, deeper lakes that are still ice free. Harvested fields can still be gleaned. We saw several dozen swans in a harvested cornfield last week. Some usually overwinter on the St. Croix’s open water near Hudson, WI.

The Son-In-Law did not fill his deer tag this year but he has been having fun squirrel hunting. In fact, the Better Half has a Brunswick stew with meat from one of his bushytails cooking in the oven as this is being written.

Winter is the season of death and rebirth, reflected in the loss and return of the sun’s light. I hope we use this winter to reach a consensus on how we can not only resist, but defeat and repel the dark forces that will soon be besetting US. I have no doubt we will once again experience a winter of our discontent.

Stories

Amber McCrary

You are a Diné woman 
A cosmic energy of earth and sky
Nihimá Nahasdzáán
Azhé’é Diyiní

Winter is over 
So, we put our stories in the drawer
Then we take them out for the next winter

It is said stories are only told in the winter
So, the bears and snakes do not hear them

My father is not a traditional man
But he grew up as a traditional ashkii yázhí
He speaks the tongue of the sky and earth

of our people
He knows the ways of our land 
But denies it all 

One day I tell him 
about watching coyote and lizard 
stories as a young girl in boarding school 
in my Navajo culture class

I tell him excitedly how the videos are now on youtube
but I still don’t understand them 
because the videos are only in Navajo

I show him the cute coyote and lizard video
in hopes he will translate for me
He stops me the first ten seconds in
And tells me I shouldn’t watch it

Not because he doesn’t believe in cultural preservation
We are only supposed to watch and tell those stories during the winter, he says
Ohhhhhh, I say as I close the app

All the years my dad talks down on our traditions
I find it interesting, he still abides by the way of the seasons
because he knows snake and bear might hear

Or maybe he said it for other reasons

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.