Spirits in Winter
I've started doing regular writing prompts, from folks close to me. This week’s prompt came from Trace:
I want you to take some time to write about spirits in winter. There definitely seem to be spirits that you get closer to during the wintery season, but it would also be good to talk about spirits of the land and how they respond to it. It might also be worth reflecting on how spirits react to winter in different places and compare them, with the places you have experience with.
The land itself is the ‘body’ of the land spirits, distinct-yet-intertwined just how my own body and spirit are. That means that how I experience land-spirits in winter is informed by how I see the land itself in winter. Slower, quieter, but still persisting, in its way.
When I connect to the river-snakes in winter, they’re likely to be decorated with snow and ice if the land is (a rare thing here in Seattle). If not, they’re even soggier and mossier than they usually are, with quite bit more rotting vegetation laying along their stony scales. They move slow, but powerful. That’s winter in the Pacific Northwest. Cold enough that not much is growing, but not so cold that things feel dead.
The winter spiritscape reminds us that this, especially, is a season when nothing happens on its own. Plants don’t grow, animals aren’t very active, the sun barely shines. Yet, if you want to survive through the winter, things need to happen anyway. You need to have sustenance stored up, or you need to go out in the middle of the gloom and find what you can. You can’t just wait for it to pass. Winter is for enduring, but there’s more to enduring than sitting there. For me, this has meant (depending on the year) focusing extra on my spiritwork, using a light-box to stave off the seasonal depression, or going out clubbing even if no one’s going with me. Reindeer has taught me how to scrape for lichen under the snow. Wolf has taught me how to catch mice when the larger animals have migrated. The land has taught me that things grow back, but they grow back better if you still tend to them a bit.
Getting a little more cosmic, a little more up-river, this time between Glowtide and Kindled Fire is, when I think in terms of the fire-story the year tells, the time when the coals are strong, but banked. You give them what fuel you can, to keep them going, because it’s a lot harder to get the fire kindled again if you’re doing it from nothing.
I’ve never really gotten the hang of winter. Like I said above, every year I try something new to make it bearable again. But one of the things that’s remained constant in all that time is the paw and voice of my spirits, guiding me through, saying ‘this is a part of the cycle too, we are with you here, even if it all looks a bit different now.’ And I’m thankful for that.