Winter Sowing - A New Year Dawns

Winter: Week 1 2025 - On Mountaintop Sunrises and the Courage to Grow Wild Again

In Her Nature is a year long exploration into the healing power of the natural world. Season by season, setting out to awaken the spirit, and rekindle joy. The weekly journal of a neighborhood, its plants and birds and creatures — and how they are helping repair a heart and rebirth a soul.

The startling brightness of the rising fiery winter sun finally wins, and we avert our burning and delighted eyes. We have been standing, watching and waiting in the frigid temperatures to catch the first sunrise of the new year on Flagstaff Mountain.

The light finally breaks, all eyes gazing to the east as we watch the fast-moving clouds shape-shift and change color, the burnished orange and pink edges of the sun rushing to once again make their mark. We sit or stand; a handful of dedicated warriors wrapped in blankets and duvets, with coffee flasks or maybe something stronger in hand, and smile in the quietness as we greet this new day, and I wonder what the next turn around its orbit will have in store.

This is not how the day started. A spilled coffee on a bedroom nightstand at 5 a.m. Yelling, cursing... a stained carpet, a ruined beloved book… Pascal angrily lamenting as we jump up and start cleaning, “... this is a great start to the new year!”

A short while later, while driving to see the sunrise, I jest, “Hey... if this is going to be a heck of a year, there are going to be some spills along the way! That's just how it goes.” He softens and grins… “Well, if this is the worst it gets, we are already winning!” We drive on up the mountain giggling.

The night before, we’d discussed ‘not’ heading out at the crack of dawn to see the new year in. We were cozy in bed, about to put out the light, and the warm duvet was imploring us to stay. No, no!! We had deemed 2025 the year of crazy... and crazy wasn’t going to get started if we didn’t seize the day! The alarm was set.

I’ll admit, the resistance tried hard. She once again made her appeal to cuddle the dog and stay small, but I’m tired of letting her win.

Resolutions have never been my kind of thing, but this year, I’ve resolved to keep meeting her where she is and finally reforge my own path. The last few years have gone by in a heartbeat and also an eternity. Since the accident, I’m acutely aware that I’ve lost my sense of self, and even after putting many of the pieces back together, there’s still an emptiness, a longing to be filled.

Two years ago, as I rehabbed, I planted a garden. I watched the most beautiful flowers bloom into existence, and by mid-summer, I reaped an abundance of delicious vegetables. Utterly proud of my achievement. In many ways, it saved me. The tiny seeds I nurtured and willed to grow through the many months of pain, loss, and defeat showed me that we are hardwired to live. In all its messiness, I saw in those seedlings the strongest desire to survive and spring forth. And in that year, that’s what I did. I mended my broken body and made it stronger than ever before.

Alas, while the physical me healed that summer, when the fall fell and the winter arrived, the inside me grew dark again. The murky shadow that had appeared a few weeks into my accident cast once more a larger shape. It dimmed my joy, and even when the next spring burst into being, I held back and followed, or maybe chose to lose myself in my suffering. The garden went wild, left to take care of itself this season. The weeds were the winners. They took the most light and filled any space they could... rather like the darkness in my mind. A tightly woven carpet of doubt sewn down deep and wide.

It’s a battle I know is mine to meet alone. I’ve tried a litany of remedies for this creeping and knotted malaise, all with the same outcome. The numbness continues, the apathy, the detachment. Except for those moments when I let the robin’s call in at dusk, or note the fox’s footprints in fresh snow, or marvel at the hoarfrost on the boxwood. It’s then that I know there's still lightness inside me, and I’m not completely lost and broken. Scientists have long since proven that spending time in nature heals and calms. Unsurprising. We were once mammals born wild.

Intuitively, I know reconnecting with the natural world is the medicine I need. It’s been calling me back, and I’m finally listening. It beckoned me to the mountain this morning. A seed ready to be sown. A new year has begun, and with it, a new growing season.