On the Dawn of the Winter’s Solstice
On the dawn of the solstice, under a sky washed clean of clouds, through the cold air cut with woodsmoke, through the piñon-juniper hills, the quiet comes singing.
The quiet takes the shape of a woman. Frost in her hair, mud on her boots, a woman comes singing down the hills, her voice a holy hush.
Birds still at her approach. Coyotes calm, leave off their laughing. The white noise of a far-away freeway recedes.
Early risers are waiting, holding hot liquids in prayer.
Holding hot liquids in prayer, we await her, our steam beaded by sunlight. Holding our vessels as if in offering, we have gathered here, what we hold fast evaporating.
We who have bundled ourselves into quilts and parkas and mittens and boots and stepped outside to see her. We who name the day.
She comes walking, her voice a holy hush.
She will walk all the roads of the world today—all the paths that switchback mountains, all the arroyos strewn with flood rush, all their eroded tributaries, and all the game trails too, before the day is through.
It’s the shortest day of the year, but she is in no hurry.
She’s in no hurry, the way we so often are.
She’s got her sturdy walking stick, frost in her hair, and mud on her boots from everywhere.
It’s mud made of star stuff, the way we are. It’s the mud from which we are made.
Her breath, a cold ghost, goes before her, and she comes singing down the arroyo, her sturdy stick in hand.
Her walking stick is as straight as a spine; one by one, we turn to watch as she sways past in her skirts, singing soundlessly, and stand taller. The frost in her hair glistens, reflecting the light of our local star.
Our hot liquids have released their calories into the cold. Soon our local star will do the same. Soon we too will relinquish the heat of our bodies, and all the liquids we contain, and all the star stuff that’s taken on the shape of us will be transmuted into mud.
But not today.
Today, we who name the day are alive.
A raven gurgles and clicks; a truck rumbles down a washboard road. A dog barks, and another agrees. One by one, all the sounds of the world return.
Only then do we turn, with all that we contain, and make our way back. Only then do we feel the cold, and hurry home.
An American with roots in the Caribbean and upper Midwest, Susan DeFreitas is the author of the novel Hot Season, and the editor of Dispatches from Anarres: Tales in Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin. She holds an MFA from Pacific University and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.