Mid-January can feel so bare. The warmth and sparkle of the holidays are already a distant memory. The days are still short and the nights long and cold. New Year’s resolutions made just a couple of weeks ago seem more difficult to keep with every passing day. It seems that winter has a frozen grip around not just the landscape but our souls as well.
I wonder about the animals hibernating in their cosy holes beneath the ground. Why don’t we possess the same instinct to withdraw at this time of year? In centuries past, northern folk refrained from activities after the harvest, huddled together to conserve warmth and waited out the darker days by sleeping more and eating less.
In contrast we seem to expect more of ourselves at this time of year. January is a productive time in homes, schools and workplaces as we attempt to meet the challenges we’ve set for ourselves. If we feel tired and find it difficult to start the day or week, perhaps it should come as no surprise.
In the winter forest, lichens take advantage of the sunlight that’s blocked by the canopy of leaves during the other seasons. They cover tree trunks and hang from the bare branches. Despite seasonal interruptions in light, they carry on, eventually covering entire trees with their delicate ornament. Their growth may seem slow to us, but it is growth nonetheless.
In January, instead of expecting amazing strides in growth like leaves in springtime, we might be wiser to adjust our expectations. Renewed patience for our tasks and our ability to do them might be just what we need. The year is still new, and there’s plenty of time ahead to make fresh beginnings.
In our journey through life it does not matter whether we achieve all the goals we have set ourselves, but that we should show patience when we do not succeed in something and then make a new start.
~ Ambrose Tinsley OSB
Flandrum Hill 
Perhaps IF we humans did hibernate during the winter we’d all be better off all around. Actually, I rather feel as if I am hibernating as much as the outer world allows. Thanks for making the self awareness trigger. Hmm.
47whitebuffalo, I think we’d all be better off too. As long as we didn’t get too carried away with stuffing ourselves before the hibernation period set in 🙂
Resolved: to grow slowly, like a lichen.
Excellent resolution Pamela.
I believe I torpor in January, except for the moments when we get a blue sky and blessed sunshine. Then, like the lichen, I feel like swinging from the treetops. It’s a torporish sort of day here but we’re going out anyway. We are out of coffee and we have finished all our storybooks. The consequence of that could be a swift descent from torpor past hibernation into coma, so off we go.
Gerry, it was so much colder than usual here today. I wonder if creatures that go into torpor feel the excruciating pain of cold before it kicks in. The stores seemed quiet as everyone appeared to be waiting until tomorrow to do their shopping when the temperature is supposed to rise above freezing yet again.
I tried to torpor for awhile, Amy-Lynn. It lasted for about two weeks. But then the restlessness to create started building. Someone told me to remember that bears give birth in January. Maybe there is a birth instinct that also starts up in us.
Kathy, creativity usually comes after a period of withdrawal so that doesn’t surprise me. Everything in Nature has a cycle of rest at some point in the year. It only seems reasonable that we humans would benefit integrating a similar time into our calendar year.
Not knowing so at the time, I wrote this post on Blue Monday, supposedly the saddest day of the year. Maybe people who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.) at this time of year would benefit from two weeks of torpor.
Interesting that you wrote this on “Blue Monday”. I once wrote a piece from the point of view of someone who has S.A.D. It turned out so realistic that folks wondered if I suffered from it. No…but have felt the edges of it. I suppose many of us who live in these gray northern climates feel the edges of it.
We’ve had a lot of grey skies the past couple of months. It does get everyone down after a while. But it’s only a couple of months until the Spring Equinox.
Amy-Lynn,
You make me look at things in such a different way.
Things do seem to take more effort at this time of year and it’s definitely harder getting out of bed in the morning.
Yawn.
Think I’ll go take a nap.
‘night.
Sybil, nice to know I can return the favor and make YOU think in a different way.
I used to think that January was the emptiest month of the year. But it does have a subdued excitement: the sky is sharp and blue, the birds are out and starting their nests…there is promise everywhere.
As to my resolutions…I was SERIOUSLY considering having a cookie this morning, but didn’t. I can’t answer for what will happen tomorrow, however.
Aubrey, no nests are being started here yet. Yesterday I even saw some flocks of geese still heading south. I think we’re in for a whole lot more winter before spring arrives. Good luck with those cookies 😉
We never really hibernate, do we? Maybe that’s our problem…
Pepsoid, well… one of our problems at least 🙂
Hmm!