Post #3302: Getting warm

This week I cleaned the spiders out of my outdoor sauna, readying it for its season of use. Since then, I’ve been in it three times already, trying to ward off the chill that’s blown in with the rains. I’m not sure if it’s age or the lingering effects of having had COVID in the spring, but I feel colder than usual these days. It’s become clear that I need to take my wool layers and woodstove more seriously (and earlier in the season) than I used to. 

It strikes me that this is true of so many things now. Skip a workout, and my joints complain for days. Forget to drink enough water, and I wake with the dull ache of dehydration low in my back. My body, once forgiving, now keeps a close accounting. The onset of winter only amplifies these small reminders, sharpening them into something like instruction.

A reckoning perhaps? I’m not yet in the November of my life, but I am far past the part that passes for spring. The corporeal work is no longer about new growth, but tending to the present: layering on  warmth before I’m cold, moving before I’m stiff, resting before I’m spent. 

In our North American culture, November is a time of remembrance. Between Samhain, the Day of the Dead, and Remembrance Day we are called to reflect on our losses, as the last colours of autumn are leaning into low grey skies and first frosts. Today I have dahlias in the garden, but they are sogged with rain and won’t stand against the turning season much longer. Noticing them as I pass by, I’m reminded that endings ask as much attention from us as beginnings. It seems to me that the work is in staying present through the fading light, and finding what beauty exists in the gloaming season. 

In creative work I am shuffling around the studio, using the summertime flowers to bring bright colour to life in the dye pot and winding skeins of thread onto bobbins for later use in textile projects. My fiddle practice similarly brightens the gloom as I bring myself to the instrument daily — warming both my hands and the room as I learn new tunes for some future social gathering. It is the glow I seek as this season begins — the brilliant autumn sun after a night of pelting rain, the flame against the glass of the woodstove, the bright spark of new tunes in an otherwise cold room. 

What do you look for in these days of waning light?