Echoes from an Old Hollow Tree

Tomorrow is the vernal equinox when your day and your night will be the same length. It is an event embodying harmony in what can often feel like an increasingly discordant world, a world that feels increasingly complex, wounded, unbalanced. Regardless of your ancestry, religion, or culture, you likely have rituals surrounding this period, surrounding spring. The recognition of birth and rebirth this time of year is universally acknowledged, celebrated with a riotous joy we so desperately need after a long winter. What is not universally acknowledged however, is the sense of balance the equinox brings. We overlook the harmony. Perhaps we are too distracted by our buzzing, beeping, flashing neon world and all its complexities. Perhaps we are too detached from the natural world to notice the gentle flow of new streams, the change in the wind, the days finally catching up to the nights. Let us stop for a moment then and reflect on all the good harmony this hallowed day brings in an attempt to find balance in our unbalanced world.

The fields are nearly thawed here. The only snow left now after a series of sun drenched days and one warm rain lies at the forest’s edge, in the gullies and deep ravines the light rarely reaches. We walk the field, the back roads, the village paths and we feel our winter-thick blood crack a little under the good light. We hear the burble of the little melt streams and smell the loamy warm-rot musk begin to bubble beneath the porch, behind the stone wall, beside the cellar door. There is a cleansing taking place; a thawing stretch and cracking of joints unused for too long. Water is flowing where it has not in months and our own blood is moving in ways for which it yearns. All this melt-water runs to the roads and turns them dire but what do we care? There is no place better to be than from where those grievous paths lead; the sugar houses are full of work-happy voices, clanging can be heard as tools are unearthed in garden sheds, and the hammering of new projects echoes through the hills. We are shaking off the frost from our shoulders, flexing our necks so our faces may feel the sun and rain, and all around us there is water, water, water bubbling, boiling, running to herald a good green riot.

The rain and the melt-flow cleanses the fields of the snow and roadsides of months-old dirt mounds kicked up by the plow. It moves us, and through this movement so too do we cleanse our winter-idle bodies. As we move, we become increasingly perceptive of our burdens. We take a queue from the natural world here; watch any barnyard and smile as the chickens find the new dirt in which to bathe, ridding themselves of parasites. Wander the forest and note which trees dropped useless limbs that were not gathering light. Everywhere around us, animals and plants are ridding themselves of the harmful and the useless. Like them, we engage in a bit of spring cleaning, but as you do so this year, consider what intangible elements are no longer serving you. Yes, you may donate the old skis gathering dust in the garage, but what else is taking up space, weighing you down? Are you ever scrolling, anxiously reading about war, global politics, and crises outside your control? It accomplishes little beyond increasing your blood pressure. Are you worrying about what may come to pass? Are you drowning in the complexity of your calendar? These things are much like the parasites on the hens or the heavy rotting limbs beneath the canopy: they serve only to weaken and to weigh. As you engage in your own spring cleaning, divest yourself of these intangible weights. Find more air, reclaim balance.

You are now halfway between Saint Brigid’s day and Beltane, February 1 and May 1, the start of spring and start of summer. Yesterday the night was longer than the day but now, little by little, the days grow longer. We have spent months planning what we will do with these days so now we must spend months acting upon those plans! No excuses now—the weather is warm and the days are growing longer. We hold ourselves back by saying “someday” or “next year” but the time to strike is now. All your dreams you dreamt in the long winter-dark of January and February must now become manifest, tangible, real. This too is a balance; if we spend all our days dreaming, no fruit comes to bear. If we spend all our days acting, we stumble without a plan. Here at the equinox you stand at the threshold between plans and actions. It is a thin place between dream and reality and it is time to step into the tangible again and strike.

We live in complicated times. We inhabit a wounded world. We change the clocks, get lost in our schedules, and are so easily mired in extremes. Now is not the time for the tyranny of extremes however. The heady highs and dark lows are better left for the two solstices when days linger languidly in tall grass and nights last longer than the candles can burn. Here though, you have the opportunity for a reclamation, for a tempered, prudent defiance against the electric current of the neon modern world that sweeps so many others away. Take a breath. Walk the woodline, tend your garden, wander by hedgerows and take stock of the water, the air, the light and all the good green harmonies therein. There you will find a little balance in our unbalanced world.

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“It wasn’t always like this.”

I looked up from the litter I was collecting in the park. Discarded trash was a constant battle in the city in which we lived before returning home. It became so bad that my wife and I organized events to pick up litter in the park followed by yard games with other families. The voice belonged to a very old man and I asked him what he meant, fully expecting to hear a lecture about how people were just more diligent back in his day and had more civic pride. He surprised me though.

“Nothing had its own packaging.” he explained. “Now everything has its own wrapper that you throw away.”

He was right. I looked at the litter I had just collected, a plastic wrapper from a stick of string cheese, and thought that before World War 2 you would have purchased cheese wrapped in cloth or just left to be protected by its own rind. What’s more, resource scarcity in the 1940s meant objects made of wood, glass, and metals instead were replaced with paper and plastic alternatives. The empty plastic jug of milk I had found in the gazebo would have been made of glass eighty years ago—too expensive to absentmindedly throw on the ground. Likewise, the plastic fork I pulled out from under a park bench would never have existed; the material used to make forks would never have allowed someone to be so careless. I had been grumbling to myself that afternoon that people had grown lazy and careless, that they didn’t care about their community or their environment and, although that is true to an extent, we must recognize that the disposability of things is what enables this behavior; if bottles of milk were all glass and forks were all domestically-produced metal, I posit we would see fewer of those items littering our gutters and parks. You may object and say “drinks like soda and beer are still put in glass bottles and I still see litter!” but consider the litter you see on the roadside the next time you drive and it will almost all be plastic, aluminum cans, or paper and not “harder” material like glass or steel. If something is disposable, it will be disposed of. Appliances and electronics too have become less durable and our mindsets have all-too-quickly shifted to “Just get a new one” when something breaks down.

This is a problem of course, but not for the reason you may think. Yes, there is the obvious problem that plastic waste is forming literal islands in our oceans, choking wildlife and finding its way into our bloodstreams. There is a more sinister problem at play however; the disposable materials do not just seep into our blood, they seep into our minds, our culture, our souls. When the things we touch every day are so easily thrown out, the disposability slowly, subtly, insidiously convinces us that everything is disposable.

Traditions. Places. People. We live in a disposable world, and we do not even realize that we have accepted that those things have become disposable too.

Consider first your traditions, the small daily practices you no longer honor or the larger annual celebrations you no longer hold. Perhaps your grandparents said grace before every meal but you do not. Why? What happened? Did you become too wise for religion, more enlightened than all your ancestors before you, inherently more thankful in your every passive moment? A daily prayer of thanks was perhaps rebranded as a modern meditation on gratitude or a mindfulness reflection. Safe. Inoffensive. Sterile. Taking an uncomfortable moment to reflect on why you do not carry a tradition—however minor—and answering honestly is worthwhile.

When we read about tradition, we inevitably stumble down the country lane and bump blindly into Chesterton who wrote

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.

Simply put, “Do not take down a fence unless you know why it was built in the first place.” Are we so certain we know why the traditions we so cavalierly dispose were held for so long before us? Are we too proud to wonder if we may be wrong in throwing them to the gutter? Are we even willing to ponder the question?

Like traditions, places too have become disposable. We do not have the perfect opportunities, homes, or climate and we leave. We pack everything we own into a truck, turn onto the interstate, and find a city that suits us perfectly, that we can really make it in. We can return when we feel nostalgic every so often—maybe for the holidays or a funeral—and then earnestly wonder why the beloved old store, church, or school is closing down all the while checking in to our return flight to our chosen home.

We do not just leave places however. We leave people. People who knew our grandparents, who know our triumphs and faults, who remember the place as we do. We write people off though, convincing ourselves they’re stuck there, that they won’t amount to anything as we will if we break free and go places. We say that, don’t we? “That kid is going places” to indicate they’ll succeed. We immerse ourselves in language that equates leaving with success and high status. Disposing of a place and the people who belong to it is not only accepted, but is encouraged subliminally and explicitly.

All of this—the loss of traditions, the leaving of place, the alienation of people—did not start because things became disposable. The problem is exacerbated by it though. How could it not be? When we discard things multiple times every day, how could the acceptance of that tangible action not pollute our intangible thoughts, our minds, our very ethos?

How do you fight it? You start by making things that last, that are not so easily discarded. This is what we at least will do in the coming year:

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None of the honey we sell from our twelve hives will ever touch plastic. From hive to bottle, plastic will simply not be part of our process. We could buy artificial frames for the bees made out of petroleum, we could use the standard bottles of honey that come with a plastisol liner, we could store honey in inexpensive plastic buckets. We’re doing none of that. Pine, glass, steel. These are the materials our process uses.

This is an environmental choice—yes—but let’s be honest: it is a miniscule dent in a global problem. So why justify it?

Ultimately, keeping bees for us is to honor tradition. My grandfather kept bees, my mother kept bees. We have all their books, their notes, their tools. If we are to honor tradition, it is important that our process is also traditional using natural methods and traditional materials. This does not mean a complete adoption of luddite beliefs but merely more deliberate decisions about the packaging, storage, mite interventions, and hive parts we use.

This, unsurprisingly, makes the entire process more meaningful, more likely to continue, and less likely to be discarded. Simply put, by being more deliberate in our decisions, we invest more into the craft and are less likely to quit when it gets hard.

We live in a world of impermanence, of fleeting actions and capricious whims. The world needs more permanence.

It needs things that last.

It needs things that deserve to become old.

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“The world you were born in no longer exists.” A now common phrase spoken with weary certainty, heavy with both nostalgia and resignation. It is said when people watch their hometown haunts replaced by parking lots, when the pace of life has quickened beyond what they feel they can keep up with, or when they simply want to invoke rage in you to sell you something. It is more often than not an earnest lament, a quiet surrender to the march of time, to modernity. The old familiar world is gone. Lately, as the snow stubbornly endures in the fields and forests, as the drifts blocking rarely-used doors show no signs of melting, it is easy to believe that winter will never release its grip. The season stretches long, so too obscuring the familiar world beneath its weight. Just as the seasons turn however, just as the cold will eventually yield to that good green pattern beneath the soil, the world we are told is lost is never truly gone. It too waits beneath the surface, patient and enduring, ready to be reclaimed.

Winter has a way of making everything terrible feel permanent, absolute, unending. When the snow first falls, it is a welcome invitation—a soft and welcome hush, a gentle reshaping of the landscape into something quiet, new, and good. It even mercifully obscures our mistakes and errors. When it lingers though, when the accumulation outstays its welcome, the delight turns to a sort of Sisyphean frustration; we shovel paths that vanish overnight, clear roofs only to watch more layers of white settle, constantly defend the animals and homestead from winter’s fang. When there is so much snow still present in March, it becomes an unyielding reality that must simply be endured. Yet, even here in the long tail of winter, there are signs of movement—both plant and animal—signs of the good that lies beneath. The osier dogwood pulsing red amid the dirty snowbanks insists that change is coming. The chickens, emboldened by a shoveled path and frozen crust, step cautiously toward the compost pile, and the bees begin to stir. The world has not stopped, even if it feels that way. It, like all good things, is on the move.

If you accept in despair that the world of your childhood no longer exists, you will live as if that is true. You will accept the loss of the traditions you loved, the pace of life you cherished, the simple joys you assumed were swept away by the neon tide of modernity. The truth is though that much of what we think is gone has simply been abandoned, abdicated, left to be dusted over like a field with snow. The way forward is not to mourn what has been buried with gnashed teeth, but to uncover it, to step up and reclaim it, to return. If you miss the kindness of a small-town community, be the neighbor who waves, who stops to chat, who shovels another’s driveway unasked. If you resent the freedoms you have lost, break the law, renounce society, or run for office. If you long for the traditions of your youth, bring them back—light the bonfire, tell the stories, teach the prayers, bake the bread, invite people in. You live in a wounded world—yes—but it is not dead, gone, or vanished. It merely awaits for you to choose it again, it awaits its resurrection at your hand.

Spring will come, but it never arrives all at once. It will appear in small victories—a patch of the garden melted into mud, the good rot scent of thawing soil, the first morning you step outside and realize the air no longer bites. In the same way, the world we miss returns in pieces, in moments we choose to reclaim. The stories we tell our children shape their understanding of what is worth preserving. The work we put into our homes, our communities, our traditions—these are the paths through the snow that lead the way toward spring. Change in the world is inevitable, but it does not have to be a force that simply happens to us. We are part of it, we shape it, and—if we choose to—we can carve the paths back to the world we love.

Let the snow fall. Let winter stretch on a bit longer than expected. Let the world tell us, again and again, that what was is no longer, that the good things are lost.

Let us refuse to believe it.

The world we love is not lost. It is simply waiting for us to step forward, to carve out the spaces for which we long, to warm them back to life with our presence, our effort, our will. The frost will break, the thaw will come, and beneath it all, the world we thought was gone will be there, just as it always was, ready to be reclaimed and live again.

Let’s reclaim all the good green things together.

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We are all oracles now here at the end of winter. We look out our windows, go for walks, step gingerly through the still deep snow looking for the signs, trying to divine spring’s arrival. We have many methods for this divination. We look to the bird feeder and wait eagerly for the first sighting of the robin. Some of us are lucky enough to live where snowdrops bloom. We listen for the trickle of sap from the maples. So many little “sure signs” followed inevitably by another blizzard, a freeze, and more shoveling. False starts and dashed hope. There is one sign however that always proves you have turned the corner, that the good green pattern is on the move and will not be denied.

Blood.

A drop by the cellar door where the house cat cornered a mouse, an imprint of a raptor’s wings in the snow, a leg or rib bone in the far field left after the coyotes’ grim revelry. As the days warm and the snow softens, both prey and predator are about and they are both desperate with hunger after a long winter. This desperation moves them in, from the forest to the edge, from the edge to the garden, from the garden to the back door. We too are hungry, desperate, and out for blood—just in a different way.

We passed St. Brigid’s day and became closer to the spring equinox than the winter solstice nearly a month ago now. The progression of the calendar is evident; the nights ease their bite and the forest turns feral. Owls drop silent from the white pines, talons snagging mice careless enough to scurry through the melting edges of the field. Coyotes, lean from winter, circle lame deer in the briar. By the chicken coop, my cat will soon stalk voles flushed from collapsing snow tunnels and leave a droplet of blood staining the stoop. This is spring’s truth: blood, not buds, heralds the true waning of winter. The animals, starved through the dark months, grow reckless now. Look at your bird feeder or compost pile at night to see a skunk sniff the fallen seed, hear the foxes at the woodline, look to the sky for hen-hungry hawks. We like to imagine a quiet, gentle greening but it is more of a violent rebirth followed by maw-red hunger. The dogwood is a hearty crimson now, foreshadowing the quickening hunts to come, an undeniable sign that life is fighting back against winter, spilling red to claim the season. Out here in our fields and forests, spring bleeds before it blooms.

We feel it as well, that stirring under the skin as water rushes along the roads and our own pulses quicken. Like the predators waking to spring’s call, we are out for blood.

Our own.

We remain focused and hunt down our own inadequacies. Perhaps this looks like following through with the resolutions we scribbled down in January, prey we track over March’s rivulets and thawing fields. Perhaps you are a Christian entering Lent, relentlessly hunting down your own sin and feeling the season’s hunger as you begin your fast. Whatever the case may be, this is not the time for idle Romantic renewal, no time to gently twirl our hair and wait for the daffodils to bloom; it is a hunt, a season to shed what no longer serves us so that we may become stronger both physically and spiritually. We are not so different from the denizens of the forests with their fangs and claws; hunger drives us to devour our own weakness and grow new muscle, sinew, flesh.

The owl’s talons and our resolve strike with the same precision: swift, secret, red. Coyotes rip through deer with pack ferocity just as we tear at old habits with a unshakeable will. The season binds us to these predators in a shared hunt, their blood literal, ours (mostly) symbolic, both spilling to awake that good green pattern beneath the snow. The animals are desperate; winter thinned them, left them hollow. So too we, starved by months of stagnation, are eager to stop preparing and finally lunge. A fox’s kill at the woodline mirrors a resolution reclaimed, a hawk’s dive shadows a sin overcome, the pack encircling lame prey evokes an inadequacy replaced with strength. This time last year, I wrote that belonging to a place means knowing where the water on your land runs, where it pools, where it ultimately falls. The same can be said of our own blood; how we move through the season, where we risk stagnating, where we ultimately fall.

Blood heralds spring on the land and in our hearts. It is a crimson thread tying us to the owls, the coy dogs, and even the cat by the barn. It is the first drop, the red proclamation of winter’s end. We are not so different from those predators at the woodline. Hunters all, the warm, moist air full of field-melt fills our lungs and quickens our good hearts. What happens next depends on the predator. Out there in the fields and hedgerows, it is a mouse’s end or a deer’s last stagger. In us however, it it is doubt slain, weakness consumed, strength of soul and body generated. Spring is no gentle gift; it is a call to kill what holds us back and demand something deeper of ourselves. In the briars of our hearts and in our marrow, we track our prey.

We are out for blood.

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The weight is real this year. A blizzard roared through this weekend and left its mark, laying down an inch of snow an hour until it felt as though our little rolling hills here in Vermont were flattened out in white. The drifts reach my waist in places, and the driveway, deck, and paths are a daily battle against accumulation. I am running out of places to put the snow; there is no conquering winter, only pushing back against it long enough to keep a path clear. But even in the thick of it, life does not stop. My daughter, bundled in her little snow suit, has turned the banks into tunnels and forts, the field into trenches—an entire world carved from snow. The chickens, usually wary of the cold, step cautiously into the cleared path between their coop, the compost pile, and my daughter’s kingdom, their curiosity outweighing their discomfort. My old friend, the red osier dogwood, half-buried, is taking on a deeper blush, its branches burning red against the pale expanse. There is weight, yes, but also life pressing forward beneath it.

Snow is both a burden and a blessing. It silences the world, slowing movement and muffling sound, pressing itself into every hollow and crevice. It demands patience; there is no rushing when the roads are not plowed, when the wind blinds you with swirling drifts, when there is ice beneath your soles. It also transforms—what was once a tangle of brambles and bare trees is softened, reshaped into something quiet and clean. The branches from the tree I fell at the field’s edge for firewood are covered, my laziness mercifully hidden for months still. I watch my daughter burrow into the driveway banks, her face red with cold and joy, and I remember being small enough to see snow as an invitation rather than an obstacle. It is a child's nature to adapt, to see possibility where we myopic adults see only work. There is something to learn from that. The snow is heavy, yes, but it is also for fort-building and secret tunnels, for the play of light shining through into the dark.

We are not the only ones affected by the weight. If you were to stand at the woodline with me looking into the forest, being buffeted by the wind, you would hear the old, resolute, trees creek and bend. They do not fight the weight—they yield, accepting what must be carried until the thaw comes to relieve them. They may drop a useless limb that no longer serves them. A dual lesson here from those maples at the edge of the field, then. Endurance is not always about resistance; sometimes it is about learning to bear the weight until it passes or letting go of what no longer serves you. The dogwood too knows this. Its branches, defiantly bright against the snow, reminds us that spring is always working its way forward, even now. The pressure of the season does not erase the promise.

Still, there are days when the burden feels like too much. The path I shoveled yesterday is buried again today, my cellar door is obscured, my arms and chest ache. The woodpile, once stacked high with autumn's foresight, is shrinking faster than I’d like. The chickens hesitate at the edge of their coop, weighing their curiosity against the cold, and I feel the same hesitation in myself. It is easy to let winter wear you down, to let the endless white trick you into thinking it will last forever. But then I watch my daughter press forward, carving tunnels through the snow with small, determined hands. I see the chickens step out, reassured by the path I cleared. I see the dogwood stand steady in its winter blush. I remind myself that winter, like all things, is something to move through with the flexibility and discernment of the trees at the woodline. Stepping, weaving, discarding what no longer serves us.

The melt will come, slow at first, barely perceptible, then sudden and undeniable. The banks of snow will shrink, the drifts will soften, and the dogwood’s red will deepen into something vascular, weaving, alive. We will trade shovels for spades, winter boots for bare feet, and we will step into the next season as if we had always known it was coming. For now though, we carry the weight and move forward as best we can—clearing paths, carving tunnels, and knowing that beneath it all, the good green pattern is doing the same.

Walk with me to the woodline…

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No one seems to know what to do here in the dead of February. You can look to the calendar and find no answers there, only more questions. Superbowl? Groundhog Day? Valentine’s Day? What is February even about? We look to the woodline and the fields, but February holds her secrets in silence. There are hints, however. Clues to the mystery, a bridge of cold light where winter loosens its grip but spring remains a suggestion waiting at the edges, a whisper told in bitemarks on stems and in the sap barely moving through the old maples. The world is quietly, silently, secretly on the move. You awake and look to the woodline to see conspiratorial tracks at the edge of the field, the sap rises in the trees, the very air carries an undercurrent of motion. February is the time of hidden work, the quiet preparation that shapes what comes after. In the brittle light of these lengthening days, the world begins to ready itself for what is next, though no one says so aloud. To do so would be to break the spell, to give the game away, to reveal too much.

February is a month of paradox, of stillness disguising motion, of patience entwined with urgency. The snow drapes the earth, fields seem frozen in slumber, and yet nothing truly rests. Coyotes call in the night, their cries sharp as needles threading through the cold, a sign of hunger and their hunt. The light sharpens, brighter but still pale, carving shadows that seem to stretch longer each day. The stars too pierce a little deeper now, even when they would normally be dulled by the light of the full moon tonight. Beneath the surface, roots twist and push, ice cracks under the soil, and buds begin their slow, deliberate stretch. February does not announce itself with grand gestures; it works in whispers, in shadows, in silence. There is no proclamation, only the steady cadence of things deciding to begin again.

This is the month of the unseen labor that holds families, traditions, and nature in quiet accord. It is in the calloused hands of the gardener organizing seed packets, in the clicks and gentle whir of the incubator’s test run, in the subtle shift of animals reshaping their dens. February carries the weight of the untold—the secret laying of plans and the careful tending of that which will come. It is the season of unspoken inheritance, the moment when wisdom is passed not through words but through action. Here, the roots of families deepen, their work unnoticed but vital, their preparations whispered in kitchens and barns. February is the patient builder, the architect of futures revealed by a lone light shining in homes and workshops on snow-covered hills.

Yet for all its secrecy, February is not static. The world stirs in conspiracy: deer graze bark off young trees, the little animals leave tracks faint as breath along the edge of the house, and a sapling bends toward light even before the thaw. The secrets of February are not truly secrets at all—they are hints left for those who know how to look, signs of what is coming if you are quiet enough to notice. In the same way, we follow these rhythms, whether we realize it or not. The careful stitching of repairs, the cleaning of old tools, the gentle winter sowing in little greenhouses—each act builds toward spring. Whatever mystery, whatever green pattern that stirs beneath the snow stirs too in us. Now is the time for you to engage in your own productive conspiracy, to quietly plan, plot, build by the warm glow of the Hunger Moon and the sharp-light of the stars.

And when February ends, it does so without fanfare. The month slips past, its labor unnoticed by most, its secrets intact. But the work it set—the work you set—in motion endures. Beneath the softened snow, roots have claimed their ground. In the branches above, buds have thickened in readiness. The secret preparations of February lay the foundation for what blooms later, just as our own unseen labor sustains us. February moves us to this quiet hearth-work, to belief in the rhythms of change, to the beauty in the unseen. It is a reminder that what matters most is often invisible—rooted, growing, becoming—shaping the world in ways we only begin to understand as it passes.

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The days are changing. There are more tracks in the field, the light lingers a little longer, and we never quite know what to expect from Winter here at his bitter end. Winter in February is a man who has learned that he is dying. Faced with his mortal coil, he is unpredictable, dangerous, liable to do anything. He may lash out in his rage and bury you in sleet, he may succumb to his sorrow and plunge the mercury to -20°, or he may be at peace with his fate and smile a string of warm days upon us. We do not know how Winter will react to learning of his grim fate, knowing that his days are numbered, accepting that he will die. We can look around, however, and reflect on what we want to do with our own days, what we want to bring in to the world with the time we are granted, and be inspired to act by what we see in the fields, the forests, and all the places where the good green pattern stirs beneath the snow.

Just as a man nearing his end accepts that he must put his worldly affairs in order, so too do we make the most of our good days. The coming cold weeks demand decisions and require forethought before we are made mad to act by the warm sun of March. We open our seed containers, our workshops, our barns, and look to what remains from the year prior, what can be salvaged, and what must be released. The garden must be mapped, the hives checked, the tools sharpened—not unlike a man patrolling his estate and grounds, making peace with his legacy, ensuring what he has built will endure beyond him. What must we build, what must we repair, of what must we let go? Winter's end here in February is not just about watching the thaw and hunting for snow drops; it is for preparing for the work that follows, setting things in place before the next turning of that old wheel. Seeds must be ordered, beds must be cleared, last year's missteps must be considered; all the lessons must be folded into the next cycle. We do not wait for Spring’s arrival idly now. We envision what we will do, we name it like an invocation, and we lay the foundation before the ground is warm enough to receive our efforts. Soon Winter will be gone, and we must be ready to carry on in his wake.

Sensing the imminent death of Winter, the scavengers and other predators are on the move. There is more activity in the fields now, more signs of predation. I have said before that the first true day of spring is when you first find blood on your land. Look to the woodline and you may see the large bounding tracks of a deer who broke free from the trees for the open where she could sprint away from her canine pursuers. Find the coy dogs’ grim leavings in any ravine, lowland, or ditch now. The woods hunger. The crows are bolder, the foxes more brazen. Every fang and claw inches a little closer to the farms and villages now, taking what they can before Winter breathes his last. We too begin our hunts now, but also need to face the fact that we are at risk of not being the cunning predator, but rather the bounding prey. We run from ourselves by not living up to our own potential, by making excuses, by saying “Someday.” Plans are only as strong as our execution, and this is the season for moving from thought to deed. The hive that died last year must be inspected, the fence line that sagged in places must be reset, the firewood pile that dwindled too soon must be stacked higher. We do not wait for the warmth to make us ready—we work now, molding the world in which we wish to live.

Yet even the best-laid plans must bow to reality. A late snow may crush the eager shoots of garlic, a storm may undo hours of careful labor, a hive may not survive no matter how well it was tended. We adjust. We mourn losses, reassess strategies, begin again. There is no use railing against fate, no use cursing or worrying about what we cannot control. Winter teaches us this in his final days. He fights, he rages, he weeps, but in the end, he must go. He must die. The land will wake, the world will warm, the good green pattern will emerge again. We, too, must learn when to yield, when to pivot, when to release what is beyond saving and focus on what yet remains. A diseased fruit tree becomes firewood, a failed crop enriches the soil, a dead hive donates its drawn comb to another colony. There was a farmer whose ewe birthed two lambs. One died and the ewe would not leave its side to the point of neglecting her living lamb. The farmer removed the dead lamb and the ewe would not give up; she searched for it, continuing to neglect her living lamb. The farmer then skinned the dead lamb and wrapped the living one in its hide. Only then would the mother nurse her living lamb. Though a grim tale, the farmer salvaged life where he could and, instead of two dead lambs, he ended up with one. A happy ending where there would have only been tragedy if not for his action. As you execute your own plans, you meet your failures like that farmer. You salvage, you cannibalize, you reincarnate. Then you move on.

This is the rhythm of the work, the good green pattern, the old wheel turning again. The world does not wait for mourning to end, for perfect conditions to align. The thaw will come, the fields will green, the bees will fly, and we will work with them all, knowing that even as Winter dies, we live.

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In less than one week you will be halfway between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. You will have the same amount of daylight you did at Halloween. January ends, the days grow longer, and now you have one less month to achieve your resolutions, to plan your moves, to bring something into being. To conceive. That is ultimately what this time of year embodies: conception. You are emerging from winter’s grim grasp but are not quite ready to declare the arrival of spring, of new life. Ask any shepherd however and they will tell you their ewes are pregnant now and the lambing begins soon. The ancient Celts called this time of year Imbolc, a name thought to derive from the Old Irish word meaning “in the belly.” While Imbolc may be unfamiliar to many, February 1 is likely known to them as St. Brigid’s Day. This day celebrates the saint who—some argue—intertwined in history with the pre-Christian Celtic goddess of the same name through a process called syncretism where, simply put, the Church absorbs a folk belief and sanctifies it, making it its own. This blending of traditions means that many of the attributes and legends of the goddess Brigid were incorporated into the veneration of the saint. The goddess was associated with fertility, healing, poetry, smithcraft, and these aspects have carried over into the saint's celebrations, making Imbolc or St. Brigid's Day a time to honor either the Christian saint or the ancient goddess depending on your inclination. Whether you call February 1 St. Brigid’s Day or Imbolc, whether you worship goddesses or venerate saints—whatever you believe—one thing remains certain: this is the time of year for creating and the time for excuses is slipping away.

The complaint that the modern world is full of distractions has been covered ad nauseum. How much virtual ink has been spilled decrying the evils of our various alerts and notifications? Enough, I’d wager. A more diabolical evil we do not call out nearly as loudly are our own excuses. We look outside to a hanging shingle, a warped shutter, a sagging post, and declare we will repair them when it is warmer or when we have more daylight after work. We look to the unstarted or half finished projects in the workshop or garage and make the same bold but hollow declarations. We could do it now though. We should. We should, but we don’t. Instead, we let our excuses grow wild like brambles and briars, choking out any chance of real progress or creation. The modern world makes this so easy not through the ease of addictive entertainment, but the ease of addictive victimization. Know it or not, you are constantly bombarded with sad, seductive whispers. Why fix the shutter when everything is already so stacked against you? Why create anything of substance when the sins of all those who came before you are so insurmountable? Why repair, build, or grow when the world is already ruined? Didn’t you hear? It’s over. You don’t really read about this sort of self-destructive autonomous browbeating. Instead, pick up any publication from the last two decades and you’ll find an article decrying the evils of constant distractions. The problem is not just the noise around us though; it is the noise within us—the constant rationalizing of why now isn’t the right time, of why we just can’t do it, of why we will fail.

This whining, this rationalizing, these excuses are not a moral failing however. They are the product of luxury, of a lack of urgent needs. If you do not sow or harvest, you can go to the store. If you do not repair, you can buy new. If you are reading this, it is highly likely your society has allowed you a certain level of insurance against failure. For the old Celts however, Imbolc was a time of dire preparation. It marked the end of waiting and the beginning of deliberate action. Procrastination would have meant hunger or worse. It is easy to place a mantel of moral superiority on our forebears and ancestors, but the truth is they simply could not look to the harshness of the season for excuses; they needed to meet its challenges or perish. If the shepherds on the hills of pre-modern Ireland waited for warmer weather to lamb their ewes, their flocks would fail. If the smiths delayed their craft, the critical work their hardware enabled would go unmet. If the midwife stayed in her dwelling due to foul weather, there would be death instead of birth. There was no waiting for convenience in the pre-modern world; necessity demanded action. You might not be a shepherd, smith, or midwife, but the lesson stands: the longer we wait, the harder it becomes to act. Excuses lead to failures and those failures simply compound until one day you find yourself kicking rocks while mumbling something about how it will be different next year.

So how do you avoid this spiral? You begin by reflecting on what you want to sow this year. You are running out of time to make this decision, so you may need to prioritize what you want to bring into this world. You will need too, to cut out distractions. This does not mean silencing your phone or turning off your TV; you need to not become distracted by fake goals. These are the goals and projects we convince ourselves are valuable, real, or meaningful when they may instead only slake our own vanity. You’ll know these projects are traps when they are conceived in a state too abstract or nebulous. Statements like “This year I am going to really focus on building empathy and community” or “I am going to become a champion of sustainable practices” may sound virtuous and meaningful, but without a metric by which you measure your progress, they quickly evaporate like mist from snowmelt in a field. Do not delude yourself; you need to do something real. Make, build, grow something tangible. In a world where it is so easy to lose ourselves in platitudes, vague notions, and good intentions, you need to cut through the mist with something real, something you can actually see and hold. It is so easy to convince ourselves that we are making progress on some metaphysical goal. It is harder, but better, to come to terms with what we have actually wrought.

As February approaches and the growing light burns away the shadows of your dormancy, take stock of what you intend to sow this year, what you intend to bring into this world. We can cling to our excuses, letting them lull us into inertia, we can allow the vagueries of feel-good goals seduce us into accomplishing nothing, or we can resolve to actually make something. Something real, something true, something good.

This theme of making something real, true, and good will be continued for paid subscribers in Reports from the High Wood this Sunday. Reports is our journal of the projects we complete and the challenges we face here in rural Vermont as we manage a neglected forest and continue our family tradition of beekeeping. Please support us by becoming a paid subscriber and unlock that story along with our entire archive. Thank you.

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I am running out of firewood. It is not an emergency. It is not really even a problem; we can always heat with the oil furnace. We enjoy heating with wood though, and it allows us to cook, melt snow into pure water, and heat our home in the event of a long term power outage. We always keep a good supply on hand. Nevertheless, this year was busy and I did not begin cutting wood in earnest until late June. As I throw what remains through my cellar door to the basement, I tell myself I was busy preparing for the arrival of our new baby. As I stack the thrown pieces, I whine internally about how long it took to build the chicken coop in the spring when I could have been felling trees. As I putter around the yard looking nervously at the dwindling pile, I tell myself “at least we started our apiary in May.” The truth remains though, that I simply did not cut enough firewood. I can spin whatever comforting stories and half-truths I want to assure myself I had good reasons to not cut as much wood as I did. I am a good storyteller, even to myself, but ultimately the hard truth is that the nights are cold and the wood pile is low. As I shut the cellar door, I reflect on how we see people flocking to the natural world these days in spite—or perhaps because—of its harsh truths. The modern world allows us to avoid so much consequence, to be so unaccountable to what truly matters. To dodge justice. Meanwhile, we are inordinately punished, sanctioned, and silenced for small, intangible trespasses that have no real earthly effect. The natural world offers a refuge from this strange inverse: a proportional, inexorable, and unyielding consequence for all things. Despite how grim and dire this sounds, make no mistake: we hunger for it. We need it now more than ever.

The modern world is full of invented consequences, intangible penalties that feel arbitrary and unmoored from the fabric of real life. Consider the anxiety we experience over missed texts, poorly worded emails, or social faux pas—things that carry no genuine, lasting impact but can haunt us for days and make us cringe with embarrassment as we recall them years down the line. An errant post might cost someone their job, a poorly timed reply might damage a relationship, and a perceived slight could spark a feud. I recently overhead someone offhandedly suggest that perhaps admitting students to preschool only if they were potty trained could lift the burden of the overworked teachers there. This man was immediately decried by his peers for being insensitive to students with disabilities and accusations of heartless ableism were hurled. You could watch this person become a pariah in real time. Consequences like these are not born out of survival or necessity; they are penalties enforced by invisible rules and shifting social norms. They feel hollow, weightless, and unjust because they lack any connection to the natural order. In contrast, the natural world is mercifully indifferent. The cold does not care why you didn’t split and stack enough firewood. The frost does not hold off because you were too busy with other tasks. Its consequences are not personal; they simply are. Yet in their cold inevitability, there is a kind of fairness. You know where you stand with the natural world. Its demands may be merciless and its consequences grim, but they are honest, and we are starved for that honesty in our increasingly artificial world.

It’s no wonder, then, that so many people are returning to the natural world, seeking solace in its brutal simplicity. Gardening, homesteading, foraging, hunting and simply hiking have surged in popularity, even among those who once had little connection to such pursuits. Look at data for visitations to national parks for instance. At the end of 2019, they surged as a reaction to the pandemic and then did not stop. You would think with the end of lockdowns and advent of the vaccine that people would have returned to their pre-pandemic indoor lives but no. They stayed in the parks, the forests, the fields. These tie us to a world that is both real and immediate, a world where effort yields tangible results. The pumpkin swollen in your garden is proof of your labor, the warmth of a fire is evidence of your preparation, the little dam your child builds in the brook changes the world. Compare this to modern labor, where entire weeks can disappear into emails and spreadsheets, producing nothing you can hold in your hands. The natural world offers not just a reprieve from this abstraction but a reminder of what it means to live with purpose, within a body. You plant a seed, tend to it, and reap its harvest. You get a box of tiny chicks at Easter, raise them all summer, and by September each of them lay for you a daily egg. The chain of cause and effect is clear, and the reward is both physical and deeply satisfying. This is why so many find peace in the garden, park, or forest. These spaces do not demand perfection, nor do they punish mistakes beyond what is fair.

But the natural world does more than just reward effort; it imposes clarity and offers proportionality. It strips away pretense and forces us to confront our failings. When I look at my dwindling woodpile, I cannot blame anyone else for my predicament and the result is an expensive heating oil bill or cold nights. This year, if I tend it carefully, I will be rewarded with warmth. The modern world, with its endless justifications and blame-shifting, rarely allows for such self-reckoning or earnest cause and effect. Our failures are often cloaked in ambiguity, and our successes are too easily attributed to luck or, God forbid, privilege. Minor infractions are met with outsized punishment, while catastrophic failures often go unnoticed or uncorrected. A typo in an email might lose you your job, but a lifetime career of wasting resources or neglecting the environment goes unchecked. Do you earnestly believe anyone will actually be held accountable for allowing huge swaths of Los Angeles to burn or for forgetting the flood victims of North Carolina as they freeze? No. All any public official has to fear from these catastrophes is an embarrassing press conference and unheeded calls to resign. In the natural world, there is no hiding from your failures. This is good. If an early frost kills your fledgling crops, it is because you were overly eager and planted too soon. If your bees starve, it is because you failed to notice the dearth of wildflowers in July and feed them sugar water. If you do not dress well for your hike, you will need to turn back or worse. There is an honesty in this accountability, a chance to see ourselves clearly, stripped of the plastic affectations of modern life. It is humbling, but it is also empowering. In the modern world, this balance is absent. The lack of proportionate natural consequences leaves us feeling disoriented and powerless. We hunger for a return to a world where effort and consequence align, where our actions have weight and meaning. This is why the natural world continues to draw us back as injustice grows. Its demands are steep, but they are fair and they are known.

So, as I shut the cellar door and glance at the shrinking woodpile, I remind myself that this is what I wanted. Not the cold nights or the extra work, but the clarity, the honesty, and the connection that only the natural world can provide. When the snow melts in March, I will gather my tools and head back into the woods, not just to ensure my family stays warm, but to remind myself of what is real. We are not made to live in a neon world of false consequences, punitive pixels, and intangible rewards. We are real and we crave the laws of the green and white places. We know it marrow-deep that we are not living well and we are blood-hungry for that sense of good order we remember, that we know we can still find out there amid the loam and the bower.

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We do not stop. Not these days. Not lately. Not really. The perpetual demands of modern life tell us to go, produce, consume. But then it snows. It snows hard, turning the roads dire and bringing the well oiled gears of modernity to a frozen halt. Schools close, evening plans are cancel, and families, once scattered to the winds of competing demands, find themselves unexpectedly gathered at home. In this sudden unexpected stillness, time stretches out, unhurried and unfamiliar. With nowhere to be and no plans to keep, many turn to an ancient and perennial comfort: the table. The clatter of plates, the scent of baking bread, and the excited bustle of shared tasks fill the house. When dinner is ready, they sit together—an unusual sight in the wounded modern world, where meals are often eaten on the go or in cold isolation. Plates of steaming food passed around the table bring not only nourishment but also laughter, conversation, and the warmth of connection. Such moments, rare as they may be, remind us of something essential: the shared meal is more than just a relic of the past; it is a vital tradition, one that modern life has quietly eroded. January, with its snow and its slowness, offers a chance to rediscover what we have lost.

The family meal was once a daily ritual, woven into the fabric of life with an almost sacred regularity. But as the pace of life quickened, this ritual began to fade. Today, the dining table too often sits empty, replaced by quick bites eaten standing up, fast food consumed in the car, or meals eaten alone in front of a screen. The culprits that have robbed you of this ritual are as numerous as they are relentless: demanding work and school schedules, long commutes, and a culture that prizes productivity over presence. Parents struggle to balance careers with family life, often sacrificing meals together in favor of convenience. Children, meanwhile, are swept up in a relentless tide of extracurricular activities, leaving them no time to sit down for dinner between homework and one practice or another. These pressures have turned eating into an individual, isolated, atomized act rather than a shared experience. The result is a profound disconnection, not just from one another, but from the rhythms and rituals that once anchored family life.

When families no longer gather at the table, they lose more than they might realize. The dining table is a place of communion, a space where stories are told, advice is given, and relationships are nurtured. It’s where children learn the values and traditions that shape their identity, where corrections to behavior and manners are made, where parents can offer guidance and support, and where everyone finds a moment to actually connect. A prayer, a toast, a question. These small, seemingly mundane interactions are the ingredients that make up the recipe for a strong family bond. Without them, relationships begin to sour—not dramatically, but subtly, over time. Studies consistently show that children who eat regularly with their families experience a host of benefits: they do better in school, are less likely to engage in risky behaviors, and have more resilient mental health. Having dinner together as a family results in better outcomes for your children than sports, theater, or any other extracurricular activity that would prevent doing so. Adults, too, benefit from these shared meals, finding in them a respite from the pressures of the outside world and a sense of belonging, of purpose. Yet, in our rush to save time, we have sacrificed these intangible and profound rewards for the fleeting convenience of takeout and ready-made meals.

The decline of the family meal has coincided with the rise of processed and prepackaged foods. Designed for speed and convenience, these meals may be easy to prepare, but they often fall short in terms of both nutrition and satisfaction. They fill our stomachs but leave us undernourished—physically, emotionally, culturally. By contrast, a home-cooked meal made from whole, fresh ingredients offers something far greater. The act of cooking itself slows us down, perhaps even causes us to solve problems together. A missing ingredient, a funny taste, asking your child “Is this missing something?” The hiss of onions in a pan, the earthy smell of fresh herbs, the prismatic colors of vegetables spread out on the cutting board—these are the small joys of creating something nourishing with your own hands. Carlo Petrini in 1986 coined this as the “slow food movement” which advocates that food be good, clean, and fair. The philosophy is not just about the source of ingredients; it’s about the care and intention behind the meal, the preservation of tradition and culture through it. It is easy to scoff at this high-minded idea, easy to come up with an excuse why you cannot make something regularly, easy to cry “privilege!” and decry the cost of real food compared to fast or processed options but consider the prescription carefully. I can hear my critics already reflexively weaving the sorry tale of a busy parent who does not have the time to cook or who cannot afford real food. To them I ask what did we do before these reflexive excuses, before the constant seeking of victimhood, before the constant distractions and neon thrum of modernity? It was not so long ago, this time. The answer is we cooked real food and we ate it together. In doing so, we reaped innumerable economic, physical, and spiritual benefits. Someone may claim it is too expensive to cook real food. I offer that it is too expensive not to.

In any case, reclaiming the family meal doesn’t require a dramatic overhaul of your life. Start small. Commit to one more homemade meal a week than you do now and make it a ritual. Carve out the time, turn off your devices, gather in the kitchen, and cook together if you can. The meal itself doesn’t have to be elaborate—a pot of soup, a roast chicken, even homemade pizza can become something special when prepared with care. Before you eat, take a moment to acknowledge the time and effort that went into the meal. Reclaim your family prayers, offer a toast, or simply share one thing for which you are grateful. These small acts of intention create a sense of ceremony, elevating the meal from a routine biological task to a meaningful experience. As you sit together, you may find that the conversation flows more easily than expected, that the food tastes better when shared, that the table feels like a refuge from the noise of the world. Over time, these regular meals can become a cherished tradition, a source of stability and connection in a fast-moving world. Ultimately, your table here in the dead of winter is more than just a place to eat—it is a place to belong, to remember, and to return home.

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