A Very Scottish Winter – Lessons in Darkness and Light, Adventures and Rest

Winter is a season loved by some and loathed by others. The short days provide a narrow window to enjoy the outdoors, and the long nights can drag – especially if you don’t have a crackling log fire to warm you when you get home. But winter is surely a time to light candles or hang up fairy lights, get cosy and coorie down. When the sun goes down and I draw the curtains, it’s a time to retreat and withdraw inside. More than ever, winter is a time when I love to write, and this season I’ve enjoyed taking time out to reflect, thinking about what 2022 has been, and what I want for 2023.  

For us, living in a rural spot, the changes from one season to the next have become much more pronounced. When the leaves on the big old horse chestnut at the top of our road quickly turned yellow then orange then fiery red, this was one of the first signs that autumn was upon us. How did I know winter was upon us? One of the early signs was hanging up the homemade advent calendar that I’d made from a big stick I’d foraged from the woods near our house. 

Early December was very mild, but it wasn’t long before temperatures plummeted and the entire UK, except for where we lived in Highland Perthshire, was blanked with snow. We watched on with envy, and then before we knew it, it hit us as well. For a few days we were treated to beautiful soft snow cover – not too much to create chaos, but just enough to enjoy some fairytale winter wonderland walks and get some bonus practice cross country skiing. Then it was gone, as quickly as it had arrived. Overnight, temperatures rose from -7 to 12 degrees so that by the time we finished off the year, even though December had been brutally cold at points, overall 2022 had been the warmest year on record.  

Living in the city for over a decade, I was barely aware of the seasons changing. But living in a remote, rural place, in amongst nature, the seasons seem so much more distinct. Warm and cold, dark and light, everything feels more pronounced. 

Darkness and Light 

Embracing darkness is a feat that I have learned to lean into – it certainly didn’t come naturally. As a lover of sunrises and sunsets, winter was always tricky –  when I was younger, the sun would come up just after I’d gone to school or arrived at work and I was cocooned inside a building. I wouldn’t leave again until after dark. Where I live now, in a forest, the topography and local landscape means I get only a small window of sunlight during these short days. I need to go quite far for a good sunrise or sunset view. I was never one for nocturnal walks – I’d far rather go into hibernation mode, or torpor like our resident bats.

But a couple of winters ago, something about the dark really started to appeal to me. My daily writing routine turned upside down. When it got to around 4pm, now a freelance writer, I’d take myself upstairs, close the blinds, light a small candle, and lie down under a cosy blanket. It was somewhere in between a nap and a meditation, either way deeply restorative and calming. After an hour or so, I’d emerge and I’d write and write and write. Something about the darkness sparked my creativity. 

Withdrawal of the senses has long been known to have these effects. Pratyahara is one of the eight limbs of ashtanga yoga, and comes from the Sanskrit, Pratyāhāra (प्रत्याहार) – Prati, meaning away, and Ahara, meaning food (or more broadly, nourishment). It refers to the conscious withdrawal of energy from the senses. Back in the day, hundreds of years ago, Celtic bards also embraced the dark. They’d retreat into dark spaces and lie with their eyes closed to access their imagination, nurturing their mind and their practice of story telling.

Darkness is where seeds are planted. Plant seeds and seeds of ideas. The dark is where they can take root and start to unfurl and grow. 

Darkness is where transformation takes place, and the dark season of winter is one of the most powerful metaphors of the crossover from the decay of autumn to the rebirth of spring. In many folk tales, this is often symbolised by a powerful goddess characters, like the Cailleach. She represents the transformation from death to new life.

Something profound happens in the dark. It’s where rest can happen, which lays the foundation for transformation. It’s why many animals – from bears to badgers, bees to bats – hibernate, enter torpor or otherwise take rest in winter. This rest period, overwintering, is essential to conserve energy: winding down activity, reducing oxygen and food intake and down-regulating  metabolisms to survive the harsher, colder months. 

Hibernation or torpor is triggered by a few factors, length of day being one, but temperature being another. But with warming temperatures, too often animals are emerging from these states too early, while fat reserves are depleted and there is not yet enough food in their habitat to sustain them. In the UK, hazel dormice are now hibernating for five weeks less than they did 20 years ago.

Meanwhile, on the surface, us humans keep plodding on. Unfortunately, hibernation, while desirable, is not yet socially acceptable. And so for many, we endure the short days and long nights. For some, this can trigger the winter blues. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), or winter depression, is a condition which can worsen over the winter, resulting in persistent low mood, lethargy, and lack of motivation, and other less than pleasant symptoms. 

What could we learn from our friends in the animal kingdom to survive these colder, darker months? A lot, I reckon. 

Adventures and Rest 

While many scurry back and forth, slave to schedules with appointments to attend, I am on an adventure. But it’s winter, just a few days before Hogmanay, so there isn’t a great deal of daylight hours to hoof it 12 km up to the bothy in the hills. The route is challenging, there has been a lot of rain in the last few weeks and the trail is boggier and more treacherous than I remember. But at last, we arrive. Fire built, candles lit, warmth and light fill the main room. We drink the last of the cocoa and hang our wet clothes and boots up to dry. I think about dinner, but it’s only 5pm. And then for the rest of the long night, the clock time becomes irrelevant. Other things are more important – keeping warm, staying hydrated, being nourished, and connecting. The time has no place here. Somewhere along the way, we paid too much attention to what time it was, and too little attention to making sure our needs were met. Time doesn’t matter to the birds, bears, badgers and hedgehogs. Temperature and light do, however. 

Later that night, the fire goes out. It’s a small effort to relight it, and thanks to my nightly insomnia, I decide to use my hours awake to tend the fire. I read a little bit, but mostly I rest, the sparks and flames luring me into a trance. Somewhere in the darkest depths of my soul, something relaxes. In my quest over this past year to meet goals, make targets, please people, I pushed aside what I needed. I was too busy, too frantic, too short on time to be able to stop and listen. I was exhausted but I pressed on when what I needed most was to stop. To be quiet. To listen instead of do. To rest instead of charge. My soul sought torpor, and there, by the fire, on a cold night in December, it finally caught up with me. I came all this way, adventured this far, and in the dark wee hours of the early morning, I finally found some peace to rest.  

Final Reflection

Burnout is on the increase. It’s up 40% compared to 2019, and in 2022, Gallup found that a third of all workers feel burned out always or very often.

At a societal level, we continue to push too hard for too long and it’s taking a serious toll. While working consistently through the year might suit some, it clearly doesn’t serve others. For me any many like me, winter needs to be a time to embrace rest and recuperation so that we are rejuvenated and regenerated by the time spring arrives. This might not mean full on hibernation, but it could very well mean more naps and longer sleeps. More hours spent gazing into a fire. More time doing ‘nothing.’ For a long time, my conditioning meant that doing nothing was bothersome. It made me feel itchy. I should be more productive. But exhaustion finally got the better of me. Doing nothing can be radical self care. Doing nothing makes me a better writer. Doing nothing can make me a better person. Embracing the dark, seeking out the seeds that are planted deep within it, bring me joy. But so do fairy lights. So even though I learned to love the darkness, I will most certainly be keeping the fairy lights up for the rest of the year.