February Notes
Embracing seasonality, Annie Dillard, and why February isn't the worst month after all ❤️
What even is this month?
“We’ve lost our relationship of seasonality.” A few weeks ago this phrase popped up in a podcast, and it’s stuck. The commenter was referring to our relationship with fresh food, but it’s broader than that, isn’t it? Natural rhythms have a way of grounding us in the world. In the busyness of modern life, our connection to the seasons feels less tenuous. Why stop and revel in the now when something more tantalizing is coming?
Let’s be honest, no one wants to revel in February. What is this month anyways? A spring tease? A winter power grab? A cheap marketing tactic for chocolate and flower import industries to exploit consumers? (Very likely). I’m not typically a fan (of February that is) but this month I finally committed to Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I’ve started it twice before, and this time it stuck. Fittingly, Dillard walks us through her outdoor haven in Southern Appalachia from winter to fall, and I’m a little amazed with how she wraps herself in it—exploring the rhythms of being that the bugs and the birds and the creek have submitted to. Here’s a line from her February ponderings:
I bloom indoors in the winter like a forced forsythia; I come in to come out. At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year’s planting.”1
This may seem like a roundabout way to highlight February’s unrealized potential, but I’m grateful to Dillard for making me pause and confront my impatience. Since my last writing, we’ve had an ice storm, a snowstorm, a false spring, and a round of the flu. We’re weeks away from a new baby. If I’m honest, I’m a bit desperate to jump into the new glory of spring, both the tangible and the figurative. But rushing through February’s discomforts means I rush through it’s delights. There’s a harvest here—the enjoyment of a dark winter evening with no obligations, the gift of time to rest my mind and body before the activity of spring, to be with my family as it is now before it all changes. The gift of waiting. The gift of hope. February is worthy of my presence.
Before I wax on, per January’s gratitude intro, here are this month’s signs of life:
I. Light
Faulkner may have been obsessed with the dying light of August, but have you stopped to marvel at a February sunset? Our house is built into the side of a hill, facing northwest, which means winter light is sparse. The sun has to crest the top of the hill behind us before it hits our house, and on the darkest days we don’t get direct light until 10am. (I can just hear the collective gasp from my fellow seasonal affective disorderlies).
BUT—but but but—in the winter, sunsets align with our side porch, and since the trees are bare, that bold burning light filters through the branches, and the contrast is glorious. There’s a way trees cling to winter, to fading light. They’re reluctant and reaching at the same time, as if saying to spring, “Wait, wait, wait, we are not ready yet. This is the time for grounding.”
Here’s a quote from Tinker Creek about light and water— “So much light has illumined me by reflection here where the water comes down, that I can hardly believe that this grace never flags, that the pouring from ever-renewable sources is endless, impartial, free.”
Like Dillard, I can hardly believe it.
II. Ladies
In the last few month, I’ve had the privilege of attending a reunion weekend with dear, dear college friends, as well as a baby sprinkle hosted by new church friends. I’ve struggled to find the right words to match the magnitude of blessing I feel. Mercifully, they arrived via a quote from a church handout on suffering:
“The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, either of the self nor of the other, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.”2
Flower Updates 🌱
For those of you desperate to know how my forced bulb experiment turned out, I’m giving it a 7. The hyacinths bloomed first, but I recycled bulbs from last year and the display was subpar, but still fragrant, which to me is just as important. The daffodils took much longer, almost seven weeks from when I brought them indoors. They’re lovely, just took longer than expected. If you are local, the TR Walmart has small pots of hyacinth and tete-a-tete daffodil bulbs for $2. This is an easy, cheap way to get something bright and happy on your table—just slip the bulbs out of their plastic pots and into something a little nicer.
One of the delights of February is bearing witness to the infinitesimal signs of the world thawing. Lucy and I are reveling in the maple and cherry blossoms that have just popped (they’re pink, afterall), as well as the clumps of daffodil heads wiggling about in our neighbors’ yards. Mine have yet to bloom (aforementioned northwest probs), but it’s still a jolt of joy to see the little green stems. My fall planted poppies and ranunculus have brightened in the false spring, and I’m hoping to get January sown sweet peas planted soon to replace the ones that succumbed to white mold. We’ll see how they do!
Next month will be short and sweet, with hopes of a baby announcement. Till then I’ll be practicing presence.
Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, pg 38.
David Whyte, Consolations
Love these thoughts! Also, I have had Pilgrim at Tinker Creek on my shelf for years and you have convinced me to finally read it :D