Winter Solstice, 2018

Each year sometime late in October running into November and on the occasion the sun actually shines, the Superior Northwoods luxuriates in long, low light. Though the hours to do it are short, seeing is made easy because there's so little left that obscures, not even the otherwise customary brilliance lent life by a sunny afternoon.

Night falls earlier by the day, morning comes later each night. Invariably the world ratchets down colder and darker. Yet on crisp clear nights, it squeezes stars from the sky like at no other time of year.

Ancient people brought intuitive understanding of the natural world to bear upon stone, and thereafter each winter the stones told them when tidal seasons again turned toward the light. As inevitable as the dark, was the light. Provided one somehow managed to hang tight until fecund spring, lesson learned.

For most of us along the northern tier the lights are on and inside, warm air circulates. Indifferent to our many conveniences, the shortest day of any year still signals the same celestial turning ancient peoples once took for a sure sign of gods. 

Today, those folk living in the northwoods, on the prairie or the plains currently gauging their dwindling propane supplies while burning right through the woodpile still mark the day. As does every other soul with at least one eye keen to the real world. By changing faster than we can keep up with, that has us collectively riding the receding edge of human glory.

The great tide of seasons flows forth. That's marked for certain in the sky. This celestial sign occurs with or without any circle of stones to see it through. It happens just the same, whether or not your view is obscured.

So tomorrow about this time when the Earth reliably shifts, should your evening be clear and crisp, go out and take notice beneath the Little Spirit Moon accompanied by glittering winter stars. That moon and those stars remember what you don't.

Then maybe dance to what was, what is and what looks to be pretty soon again.

The best of this season to us all.