By Lindy Gifford,
My family gathered evergreens to decorate the house for Christmas, as we always have and as our ancestors have for thousands of years before us. Long before they did this for Christmas, they gathered them for Solstice. All my life, I have loved walking the mossy paths of the woods around our camp, “tipping” the balsam branches. When I was young the spruce and fir trees there were much smaller. Now they have grown so tall that their roots struggle to hold onto the thin soil that barely covers the rock below. And the fall and winter storms are getting ever worse. For many of the tall trees, their time has come and more and more of them topple every year. They are so big and so tall, that they fall like enormous dominoes, mowing great swaths of tangled destruction. In places, the woods of my childhood are unrecognizable.
As I clip greens in the apocalyptic landscape I wonder about the increasingly savage storms. Our modern human roots feel as shallow as the trees. I worry for my two twenty-something daughters, one of whom is clambering through the fallen trunks like a forest elf. Then the sharp scent of the cut branches brings me back to what my ancestors knew that I forget: that evergreens in the winter remind us of the presence of the Life Force in everything—even death. I take great solace in these ancient rituals, for they are a tenuous thread of the fabric that once held our world together. I believe that even simple rituals like these can work to reweave life’s fabric and strengthen our shallow roots against coming storms. And when we fill our house with Evergreen’s wildness and scent, we remember that embedded in the dark moment of Solstice is the seed of the journey back toward the light.
Lindy Gifford lives on, and learns from, the Damariscotta River. She is the mother of two smart, independent daughters and has been successfully married for 38 years. She has worked as an archeologist, photographer, artist, and graphic designer and was ordained an interfaith chaplain in 2015 by the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine (ChIME). She is Reflectionary editor, the author of Doodle-ography Journal doodle-ography.com, and soul proprietor of manifestidentity.com, helping people publish books and websites.
Ever Green photograph (taken at Christmas Cove!) by Lindy Gifford
