Last night, we got the first snow of the season here in Colorado (apart from the snow up in the mountains). It’s been a whole month later that in 2022 & 2023 and four weeks later than last year. It was just a sprinkle, just enough to cover the rooftops, and it’s already almost gone in the sunshine despite the sub-freeing temperatures, but it’s snow nonetheless.
It’s probably just the starting tip of winter, like a first small vanguard, and there will still be plenty of sunny, warm and balmy days. But winter might be here — and part of me says, “At last!”
One of the things I really like about Colorado is that it has four definite seasons.
The lack of real seasons was one of the things I ended up really disliking about California. It felt confusing and in the end almost exhausting for my body — and thus also for my mind, especially living near the coast with the marine layer in the summer. My body didn’t really know when to “wake up” or when to “hibernate” so I couldn’t really get that cyclicality of increasing & decreasing activity that my body & soul so revel in.
Here in Colorado I get that again, analogously to the places where I spent most of my childhood and youth. I love the summer heat, the intense light, even the pounding sunshine, the sweating: it feels so alive, so powerful and wild and liberating. Then, in the autumn, I can feel things — my body — gradually slowing down while still being active and actually getting some of the best trainings and athletic performances then. Winter follows, kindling my whole being into rest, into slowing down, recovering, hibernating almost. And getting ready for a renewed awakening, renewed coming-back-to-life in the spring.
At this point, my body, and probably also my mind, have been feeling “ready for winter” for a week or two, but the weather hasn’t been conducive to slowing down or resting. I still have one more race this season so the good weather has been helpful to train for that and I feel I need to keep up my “will to push” for another week. But I can feel that part of me is ready for rest, for the slowing down of winter. Especially this year, maybe, that has brought so much unexpected growth and healing and change for me.
I’m feeling the need to slow down and settle for a bit, let all the “stuff” inside me settle — let these fields rest so they may give bountiful crop next spring.
The Little Prince and the Fox 