Beginnings

December 23, 2007

  To go in the dark with a light is to know the light

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,

And find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

And is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

- Wendell Berry

After all the anticipation and planning, the winter solstice has come and gone, and I am now several days into my Circling Home journey. I'm off to a really satisfying start.

I love the symbolism of this beginning at the moment of least light and greatest darkness here in the Northern Hemisphere in the annual circle of our earth around the sun. I marked the precise solstice moment at 10:08 PM on Friday night, Dec. 21, with a small group of friends in the Whidbey Institute sanctuary, a short walk up the hill on a trail through the woods from my house. We sat in silent meditation as the moment approached, then walked the circular maze of a stone-lined labyrinth on the nearby Institute land under a nearly full moon. 

The next day I invited friends from the community to join me again at the sanctuary to help mark the beginning of my Circling Home year. Thirty friends and neighbors took time from their busy Holiday schedules to attend my little home made ceremony. We again sat in a circle in silence together, then I shared some poems, a few songs, and a period of open solstice reflections. It was a deeply grounding and gratifying expression of community. I felt such gratitude for this support, and for the way my community has embraced the spirit of this endeavor. It really sent me out with wind in my sails.

 

Here are a couple of the poems I shared during the ceremony, and that I share with you now as we begin the long turning back toward the light. 

The Peace of Wild Things

(by Wendell Berry)

When despair for the world grows in me

And I wake in the night at the least sound

In fear of what my life and my children's lives may be

I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty

And the great heron feeds

I come into the peace of wild things

Who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief

I come into the presence of still water

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

Waiting with their light

For a time I rest in the grace of the world

And am free

Lost

(by David Wagoner)

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you

Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask permission to know it and be known

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,

I have made this place around you.

If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches are the same to Wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,

You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows

Where you are. You must let it find you.

December 25, 2007

For the first time in years, Christmas was a genuinely relaxed time. I rode my bike the six miles into Langley for the Christmas Eve candlelight caroling service at the Methodist church, then on to my mom's house to spend the night. Christmas day was full of the usual convergence of aunts and uncles and neices and nephews, grandchildren and great grandchildren, with four generations of Hoeltings assembled at my mom's for the day. Sally and I took a long walk after brunch, dropping in on friends for a bit of holiday cheer. It actually snowed for a spell in the afternoon, and the Cascade Mountains and foothills were white almost down to tidewater. This was the closest to a white Christmas we've had in a long time.  

I have been surprised how good it has felt to walk and bike everywhere during the hectic build-up to Christmas. The fact that I live in the country at five miles from the nearest store or services is so far proving less daunting than I expected. Even riding these distances at night when it's raining hasn't felt like a burden. It is actually a relief to have eliminated the option of using a car. Because I have given myself no choice but to ride or walk, I'm just doing it, and already I can feel the slower rhythm beginning to take hold. I feel some strength flowing back into my body, and I find the contact with the elements surprisingly welcome. I've spent so much time exposed to the elements during my life as a commercial fisherman, wilderness guide and outdoorsman that it's not that big a stretch to add this contact back into the domain of transportation. I find myself wondering why I've waited so long to embrace this shift.

I'm surprised by the interest my community is taking in what I'm doing. Everywhere I go around the island people seem to know what I am up to, and want to talk about it. Partly I think it is an accident of timing, with the recent devastating floods in Western Washington on the heels of the Bali Climate Summit and Gore's Nobel Peace Prize speech. New data from the IPCC showing that the polar ice cap could be completely gone now in as few as seven years puts an exclamation point on the mounting level of concern. I sense a palpable change in people's awareness of the climate crisis, and I'm gratified that my efforts seem to be challenging many of my friends and neighbors to think harder about their own choices. I would be doing this even if no one was taking notice, but the fact that it is striking a chord really helps fortify my own resolve to dive into this experiment with as much determination as I can muster. I'm really quite excited to be underway, and to see where it goes from here.