by Wendy Morical
I’m writing on a deeply cold and snowy February day, a day where retreat into a cozy corner with a blanket and book seems the only logical thing to do. The view from my desk is as white and black as an Ansel Adams photograph. Even the sky is white. The black bits take several stark forms: a power pole, fenceposts, a cluster of bare aspen trees. It is a bleak landscape.
I have been reading Wintering by Katherine May, a richly evocative exploration of weathering difficulty, illness, and darkness which has the subtitle The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. In this lovely book, May writes of the cycle of deciduous trees and describes the process of abscission as “part of an arc of growth, maturity, and renewal.” Abscission is the scientific term for the natural detachment of leaves. My very last undergraduate college class was a botany class, taken by necessity to meet a science requirement, but that was a long time ago. I haven’t thought much about the inner workings of trees in the intervening years, but May’s words have caused me to look at them with new awareness.
Leaves drop and we see bare branches, what we perceive as a skeleton of the living tree, a dormant and non-vital aspect of the winter landscape. In reality, as May describes, the buds of next spring’s leaves have been formed during the growing season and are already present along the “bare” branches. These buds contain the tiny beginnings of leaves, shoots, or flowers. The trees are prepared for winter but at the same time, anticipating their spring.
The abscission of leaves in autumn exposes these buds, the furled promise of next summer’s green canopy. Additionally, fallen leaves on the ground and tree bark provide mulch, food, and shelter for animal and insect life. At our home, we pile our raked aspen leaves in the field behind our house and delight in the day when the deer first discover this surprise bounty under the snow. The area becomes a gathering place for our gentle friends.
Deep within the heart of the tree, life goes on. It is waiting and weathering, toward that day when the sun brings forth its leaves and flowers and the pollen of renewal is carried on spring breezes.
May says that “transformation is the business of winter.” Amid the loss and depredations of the pandemic year, despite the challenges of living our days from dark to dark in deepest winter, amid the political clamor and social unrest of these times, perhaps we can offer ourselves permission to winter. We can use these white days to find a quiet place of self-care, rest, compassion. We can step back from fighting against our difficulties and conserve our energies until the natural cycle of life bring us to our next beautiful season, always growing, maturing, and renewing.
“We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.” (Katherine May)
Remembering that long-ago botany class, I recall that part of our final exam was identifying trees by looking at sticks laid on the lab tables. Even in the barest branch of the tree, its identity was visible; we could know the tree by examining a twig! At the time, this seemed miraculous to me – and I maintain that opinion still.
What a miracle. No matter how stripped bare we may feel, we can trust our springtime will come, nurtured by these snowy times of rest and renewal. Thanks be to God for winter.