This Winter, Okemos

This Winter—Okemos

Yes, it’s cold, but I’ve gotten so much inspiration from the frigid sunrises, The sun pours over the horizon like molten gold around 8 a.m. It starts as a lavender hue, a tiny glow that grows stronger and stronger, changing from mauve to orange. The pinks and bronzes get all mixed up, a backdrop silhouetting the bare tree limbs, tinting the snow on the ground.

For a moment everything looks new again. As if we haven’t been here before—and we haven’t. There is only today—and when it is gone, we have tonight, and then tomorrow.

Neolithic societies had all kinds of traditions to welcome the sun mid-winter. I’ve actually been to Newgrange in Ireland, where the docent contrived, after we clambered through a tunnel into the center of a submerged dome-like structure built around 3200 B.C. before the Celts were the Celts, to show us how the inhabitants had aligned the doorway in conjunction with the Winter solstice sunrise. Back then there was no way to mark time and ancient humans needed to know that the cold and darkness would one day fade away. It comes and goes. Til then . . . we’ll tell stories around the fire.