Winter; a reflection on being ill

There are many who consider Winter a vile thing. It tears the last fluttering leaves from the trees, casts them to the ground with seeming indifference, if not outright disdain, and allows the dignity and beauty of what seemed only blessing for many months of the year to fade into dust, become mixed with the grey slush of urban street brine and finally, ignominiously, dissolve into the cracks in the pavement, the fissures in the earth, or swirl drainward with the stormsewer swill.

But Winter has much to teach us about patience, renewal, and hope, about the purpose in the luxury of rest, about the importance of a softer light, a cooler reflection, a simpler, sparser palette with which to colour the world. These things are, it seems, lessons nature knows well but that we, whose minds can overdrive on new ideas, possibilities, opportunities,  are able to suppress, overcome. That, perhaps too often, has been to our detriment.

It seems that nature will have its way and that keen though my mind is to race on to the next thing, I am to sit and ponder Winter's gifts for a time, learn that patience thing, regain strength and energy, attend to this simplest of palettes as it offers me its extraordinary perspective. You, West Hill, have chosen to be complicit in this insistence and I thank you for that. As I settle myself into this luxury of time and rest, know that you are each in my heart and as I learn from Winter's deep truths, may you also.

Much love,

gretta