Perambulations

This Winter Solstice day reminds me of an experience from twenty years ago. My family was visiting family in Ithaca, New York for the winter holidays. My favorite activity had always been sitting in the family room, reading and looking out the big window at the wooded valley below, but this visit included our two young children. They went on walks up the hill behind the house and down into the valley below, wandering around the local science center experimenting with the exhibits. In other words, moving moving moving!

So when I noticed an offering from the nature center about a guided walk on the new moon which fell on solstice night, I signed us up. The walk would take us through one of the many gorges around the area, along a river, to a waterfall. Perfect activity for a winter’s night.

Our guide told us we could take flashlights with us, *but* encouraged us not to use them on the walk up the gorge, to embrace the darkness of the moonless sky on the longest night of the year in upstate New York. We began walking on the soft path beside the rushing river, sometimes crunching on patches of ice, sometimes through thin layers of snow. The only sound was the rush of water from the river and murmurs of our group.

We all stopped for a moment once we were away from the lights of the parking area, to let our eyes adapt at least a bit. And then we began walking again, deeper into the gorge, deeper into the darkness. We walked slowly, holding hands, the children excited but also subdued with this unusual activity. We talked quietly about how the snow and ice were visible and stars sometimes through gaps in the trees above.

And then we reached a grove of hemlocks arching over the path, densely packed, densely needled, no snow or ice underneath, no light from the stars, no glimmer from reflected light anywhere. I held my child’s hand more firmly, took a deep breath, and then one step forward, calling on all my other senses to gather information.

“Mama, it’s so dark,” came a small voice beside me.

“Yes it is,” I affirmed, “what can you hear rather than see?”

“The water. My breathing.”

“What can you smell?”

A little sniff. “Pine? And snow.”

“You can smell snow?”

“Yes, it smells cold!”

“Yes, it does! What can you feel?”

“Your hand, my feet–they feel scared, my cold nose.”

“My feet feel a little scared too, so maybe we could take smaller steps? So our feet know there is something under them.”

“Let’s do that.”

So, small step by small step, hand in hand, we shuffled through that dark dark stretch of the path until we emerged from under the hemlocks into what seemed a bright bright patch of snow.

“We did it, Mama!”

“We did it!”

At last we reached the falls after another dark patch, and stood in awe and wonder at the thunderous torrent under the stars. After the walk in the dark, the falls seemed almost luminous with ice along the edges and hanging from nearby trees.

Our walk back went more swiftly, the path familiar. My family mostly went without our flashlights, at least until we reached that patch of hemlocks again. We turned on our lights and the mystery fled, revealing a flat, pine-needled covered path.

Over hot chocolate and cookies back home, we talked about what we noticed, what it felt like to walk outside in the dark.

As I prepared to sleep that night, I thought about my distant ancestors, walking in the dark on winter nights, wondering about light’s return; I thought about the moment on the walk when I let go of my own need for knowing and trusted that the Earth would hold me as surely as I held my child’s hand; and I thought about all the ways our modern society stamps out wonder and mystery.

I want to learn and grow and seek understanding of the workings of this world, here and now, but I also pledged myself that night and many others, to cultivate a practice of wonder and to embrace mystery. Sometimes that involves marveling at the complex aroma of my morning cup of tea, sometimes contemplating the glorious action of the twelve-year-old compost bin that I have never emptied and yet has not overflowed.

However you celebrate this season, may you also find wonder and mystery and hope.