77CHAPTER THREE
Stories from Ecological Sciences
It is winter as I (Sally) write this. Snow is blanketing the mountains,
and outside my window a yearling deer is nibbling on the few green
leaves protruding from the thorny hedges at the edge of the yard. We
are nearing the time of the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the
year in the northern hemisphere. On that night I will keep a candle
burning, remembering the ancient peoples who kept fires and offered
prayers for the returning of the light at stone monuments such as
Stonehenge and the Sun Dagger at Chaco Canyon. Like my Celtic
ancestors, I honor the solstices, the equinoxes and the cross quarter
days in between. I pay attention to the turning of the seasons.
In the Appalachian Mountains the changing of the seasons is
dramatically apparent. Winter brings cold, and snow clings to
the branches of the pines and hemlocks, the mountain laurel and the
rhododendron. The days become shorter and the nights lengthen
as the cycle of the seasons turns toward the Winter Solstice. As the
days lengthen, spring brings infinite shades of greening, leafing and
budding and the delicate early flowers such as lady slippers, violets,
anemones, trilliums and spring beauties.
Especially in spring
the world resists
our best designs
what is alive
blooms in white stars
on a green carpet