Good morning!
Welcome to Digestable, your mouthful of things happening in the world.
We humbly present to you a collaborative work on this short day and long night. We wrote this piece together, Gabriel in Dublin, Lena in Burlington.
Today’s ferments:
I. Where we are
G: It’s just after 4:30 here and it's already dark outside. I’ve been in full midwinter hibernation mode today, not leaving the house and cooking up some winter veg. Yesterday I replaced the wilted basil and cilantro in our windowsill planter with sage, rosemary, and thyme.
L: The sun is at its peak, on a rare break from the heavy gray of the winter months in Vermont. This morning, I greeted the sun as it broke through above the hills to the east, showing momentarily before it hit the characteristic morning cloud cover. An hour later, the sky cleared, leaving us in sunshine—almost as if the sun is taking advantage of the few hours it is allotted on this day. A local flock of starlings appears enthralled, swooping and diving around the neighborhood, returning to their tree, in full view from my window, periodically.
II. Telling time
G: I will be heading out into the long night later to go to a Christmas market with some running group friends. Nollag is the Irish word for both December and Christmas, and the Christmas season stretches out over several weeks of parties, mulled wine, and generally taking it easy. The solstice can symbolize rebirth, but there’s also something important about sitting in the dark and looking around. During this time of year, lakes settle out into distinct bands of temperature, finding stillness after the dynamic churn of the fall.
L: We spoke of the summer solstice today, of the long day and the short night. That day, Gabriel moved intentionally across the island, following the sun, although mostly it was cloudy. I walked the same path then as I did this morning, although hours earlier, to see the sun rise. On my way back, the already-quiet streets came to a true halt as two deer cantered through town. The few of us out beamed at each other. That night, the sun set north of here, all the way to the right in my field of vision, looking west across Lake Champlain to the Adirondacks. Tonight, it will set far left and to the south.
III: Survival, aided by nature and culture
L: We desperately look for markers of time during this cold, slow time. In the mind of the fall, the light is what signifies temperature and seasonal change—once it begins to get dark midafternoon instead of evening, it seems like the winter’s upon us. But today is the pivot time, where the light begins to come back, yet the next few months will be much colder than it has been thus far.
G: Lena mentioned the series of New Years throughout the year in addition to the solstice: Rosh Hashanna in the fall, St. Nicholas Day, Orthodox vs Catholic Christmases, and New Years. They brought up the extremely silly Groundhog Day as a holiday that allows us to look forward to the spring. It seems like these markers are intended to keep us going, keep us periodically thankful in the times between the squash harvest and when it’s been cured, between when storage crops run out and the maple sugar begins to flow.
IV: The changing climate
L: Gabriel was the first person I ever met who really loved the winter. They miss the deep cold; their reverence for the darkest, most frozen time taught me to pay attention to it. We’ve talked often of heavy snows and frozen bodies of water that are now relics.
Climate change takes so much from us, but at this latitude, the coldest cold is first to go. Warming is most acute in the winter. Lake Champlain used to freeze over, but now the ferry runs across it all year. Before the Brooklyn Bridge was built, the easiest way to get from borough to borough was by ice skating. I’ve never seen the East River freeze over, and it likely will never again. Cold water is not as cold; fish, accustomed to near torpor in winter now have to find a new place in the water column. We too must consider our place, over and over again, as the world we call home changes.
We are holding close the cold, sitting with the solstice in gratitude, before we turn our attention to the future, to planning for spring.
V: Rebirth
G: The solstice is nice because even our fossil fuel-soaked oligarchies can’t yet do anything to the sun. That’s part of the problem, I guess, if you’re a geoengineering hopeful, but there’s something comforting to me about the fact that I’ll always be able to count on the days getting shorter and then longer again throughout my life. There are some things about this planet that we cannot even comprehend changing, but most of those things are changing all the time. Maybe that’s what Octavia Butler means when she writes that “god is change.” Maybe when we look at the cycling of the year through the lens of our holidays, or the frame of our bedroom windows, we’re following her guidance to “shape god.”