Darkness Season
Let’s call it what it is
There went October.
It has been heavy thing upon heavy thing and that shows no signs of letting up, does it? I’ve been glued to the news like maybe you have too. And then I was in Maine two days before the mass shooting began. I passed road signs for Lewiston, remembering a lady I knew as a kid who lived there. Also on my mind is the private heavinesses that my friends are carrying. I’ve got my own too, actually. Haven’t we all?
I felt this way before the grief came rolling in and I feel this way now: let’s call the incoming time of year what it is. Autumn and winter is darkness season. No other moniker I’ve seen feels right to me—not candle season, not owl season, not sweater season, and certainly not pumpkin spice season.1 Darkness will be what rules the coming months in the northern hemisphere.
By “darkness” I don’t mean sadness and tragedy will continue, though there’s no reason to believe they won’t. I mean literal darkness—the lack of light and shortened days—will pervade these months. There will be less hours of day, more hours of night. And I’m deeply feeling that particular reality right now.
We’ll be getting less and less daylight until December 21, the shortest day of the year. On that day, sunset will arrive around 4pm. From there, the days trend longer again but we will still be left with a whole lot of darkness for a whole lot of days. The cold, of course, is variable. And where I am it’s increasingly less intense. But still, a chill (or more) will soon be a visitor we can’t shake.
I don’t struggle with this season the way some people do, but it still gives me pause. It’s nothing to shake a stick at, darkness season. I’m trying to know what to do in the face of all this and how I can live closer to the reality of it, because I think that’s a perception shift that benefits more than me.
What do I know for sure about the nature of the darker months? What happens in the living world and how does the living world meet the truth of the season? What can this teach me and what can I hold onto?
I’ve been reading about what animals actually do to survive the winter months because I realized I was making a lot of assumptions. The story I had in my head seemed to be: Some hibernate, some migrate! The end! Which is of course too simple.
There’s a spectrum of hibernation, it turns out. Some do a lot, some do a little, some are hibernation flexitarians.2 And then there are animals who don’t hibernate or migrate at all. They make do. The add an extra layer of fat, like chipmunks and squirrels. Or they store up food. Moose grow coasts with hollow hairs that keep them warm.3 Geese and other waterfowl have vascular systems that allow for warm, oxygenated blood to flow to their extremities while cooler, oxygenated blood passes close by on its return to the heart. (I’ve written that sentence but I don’t understand it. It’s what a nature website told me.4)
What I gather is, out of no where, animal bodies do these things because they have to. The shorter days trigger responses in the hypothalamuses, or “master gland,” in their brains. That’s the on switch for adaptation.
And it seems that no squirrel ever said: I actually want to stay a size four this winter, so I’ll pass on the extra chunk. Only one serving of acorns for me, thanks!
Animals adapt, no questions. No tree or plant argues with going dormant, though some lately seem to be getting confused with the extended warmth and put out blossoms in October.5
I find myself thinking about what our adaptions are, as humans, and how we have opted out of some of them. We put on coats and turn up the heat, but do we really adapt to the full nature of this season so that we can survive it in the finest shape possible? And do we gather from it all it offers?
Some people change their behaviors shockingly little with the season, going from their perfectly warm, bright house to the perfectly warm car in the garage to a perfectly warm, glaringly lit Target. They never don a coat. Warming and lighting the house is a matter of a tiny button, not effort or planning. I think we’re clearly learning that all this technological customization of our indoor environments is not without cost. It’s just that right now many people ignore the cost, and it falls to birds6 and the planet. We’re paying all the same. Plus, we too have hypothalamuses. How do ours react to the shortened days? Are they saying anything that we ignore?7
I wonder: do some of our actions, like the forced air heating in my house, really constitute adaption or are they something else? What would true adaption really look like for a human body? Do we miss out on something darkness season can teach us when we modulate rather than adapt?
With that question, I also want to note that fall and winter are not all hibernating, plumping up and staying put for our animal kin. Some of them get busy.
There are patterns of seasonality to animal reproduction, because organisms evolve to survive. And making babies in the dark months is a way to guarantee this. I looked into this because some time ago I remember hearing about how there are more babies (human ones) conceived in the darker months.8 But this pattern extends to animal kin too. There appears to be seasonally contingent fertility changes in both humans and animals, along with an alteration in sexual activity. For animals like deer this pattern is essential: shorter days are what announce the time for reproduction. This way, they can carry their pregnancies through winter and birth in a time of plenty.
This makes autumn and winter a time of growth, which is so incongruent with our modern conception of the seasons. But it’s the kind of deep, dark, unknowable-except to-the-grower-and-grown sort of growth. Slow. Hidden. Not flashy or explosive. It’s gestation, which comes from the Latin gestationem, "a carrying.” What delightfully odd grammar. A carrying.
There is of course very little cultural support at this time for adapting our behaviors to the nature of the season. Capitalism marches on, be it July or January. For many people workloads increase in the dark months, rather than decreasing as in the more-than-human world. Few people I know make any great changes to their sleeping and waking hours. Slow, hidden growth is not gently modern western culture’s MO.
But I find myself thinking of how so many cultures have a celebration of lights in the darker months. Candles, fires, strands of lights, lanterns burn against the contrast of the long nights. And also many cultures include festivals that involve wishes or hopes for things unseen and packages or wrapped up items. A carrying. Many of us are so far from our roots and the wisdom of the more than human world, but maybe we carry pieces of these stories still.
The other thing about the dark season—and the living world knows this well—is that it ends. The dark months are in relationship with the months of light and warmth. The baby deer must begin in the dark of the autumn womb to stand on wobbly legs amongst the spring violets.
I leave you with a poem by Irish poet, writer, priest and philosopher John O’Donohue. It’s called “For the Interim Time.”
When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,
No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.
In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems to believe the relief of darkness.
You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.
The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.
“The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born.”
You cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.
Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.
As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.
What is being transfigured here in your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.9
Did something strike a cord here? If you have some bandwidth to spare, maybe join in somehow, by leaving a comment, sharing this publications or subscribing. Or go quietly on your way, fellow internet wanderer. Whatever works for you. 🌀
Though I like cinnamon and cardamom as much as the next person.
A natural, biological Patagucci jackets.
The lilacs and violets here are having a second bloom.
A question for another day or a reader more knowledgeable than I. Help me out if you can.
Which includes me, with my October birthday.
From Benedictus, A Book of Blessings by John O’Donohue, Bantam Press, 2007
This afternoon as the sun lay low, I thought it must be late--no, 3:30! Here at almost 6p, I am ready for a nap! Am so on that page. Great thoughts of what we may be learning in that space. Perfect poem, Ema.