What if you were to conserve your energy to survive adverse conditions? What if you accorded yourself the time to slow down drastically?
Some mornings it’s harder to start the fire. My stash of pine cones has dwindled. In October I went to gather more fallen pine cones, but since I’m clearly not the only one who gathers them, I had to resort to pulling down the ones with their tightly closed scales off their branches. I have discovered that if placed near the hearth, the scales eventually open. One was lying on the ledge of the wood stove when it began to crack and pop and slowly separate. I leaned forward and marvelled at this opening.
Cold and humid, they remain firm and closed in on themselves to avoid destruction. As they warm and dry, they open and release their seeds. I can’t help but consider this as a metaphor in my current life; how there are times when we must hole up and self-preserve so that when the time is right, we can expand and spread our gifts to others.
We are under our own constant pressure to perform and produce, to update our professional profiles, to be heard, to be seen, to be successful. What if we take from the example of a simple pine cone: self-preserving in harsh conditions and closing up on one’s self as an act of survival? Survival sounds extreme; let’s simply say there are seasons when it’s perfectly natural and necessary.
We can offer ourselves silence, void of stressful news reels, internet and Black Friday sales. I have an amazingly talented writer friend who has found herself in a quiet period. Well maybe this is necessary and essential to our survival and our art.
A few months ago I wrote a short piece on Day One. My progress and healing have been hardly linear. Hence, the attraction to this tightly wound miracle from nature. It’s essential for me to have at least one pine cone each time I try and start a fire. (free kindling)
“During hibernation, the squirrels’ brains undergo incredible stress; neurons shrink and connections between them shrivel. But they also demonstrate incredible plasticity. During periods of arousal, the squirrels’ neurons recover — blooming to even greater levels than usual, then settling back to normal. It’s thought that this recovery may have something to do with a protein called tau which builds up in the brain cells of hibernating squirrels — and in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.”
Consider a cauldron of Bats, a prickle of hedgehogs, a loveliness of ladybugs, a sloth of bears, a bale of turtles who simple curl up inside their shells, a dray of squirrels, and a walk of snails. They take time to stop and go dormant.
“Environmental stressors cause a wide variety of animals to go into a state of dormancy.”
If you relate more with a parliament of owls, fully alert and presiding over the dormant world listening for the slightest movement two feet beneath the snow, you still must be still and listen.
If you are lucky you have others to huddle with in the manner of a mischief of deer mice or a madness of marmots. But none of us disappear. Even if you are a lone wood frog in hibernation, lifeless and almost frozen, when the time is right, you will defrost, and your heart will beat again.
Burrow down, dig in, lie dormant, if this is what is calling you. Small things show us how to adapt and endure, find resilience and persevere. We can winter before we spring again.
To my friend, Alison
