This coming Saturday, Dec. 21, marks the darkest day of 2024 (at least for those of us who live in the northern hemisphere). This time of year always feels sacred to me, the yin to the rest of the year’s yang (and especially the yin to the big “go-go-juice” that tends to mark the beginning of the new year, with all of its aspirational goal-setting.

In celebration of this cosmic holiday, I wanted to share a piece I wrote about the winter’s solstice, with a strong sense of place here in the high desert of Santa Fe, that was actually published in the southern hemisphere last summer, closer to their darkest day of the year. It’s called “On the Dawn of the Winter’s Solstice” and it was published by a lovely online journal called takahē based out of the Aotearoa region of New Zealand. You can read it here. I’m also going to include the beginning of the piece below (I hope the rhythms of this piece find you, wherever you are right now, and help to bring you a little of that stillness and peace we so often talk about in connection to this time of year but rarely get to actually experience):

On the dawn of the solstice, under a sky washed clean of clouds, through the cold air cut with woodsmoke, through the piñon-juniper hills, the quiet comes singing.

The quiet takes the shape of a woman. Frost in her hair, mud on her boots, a woman comes singing down the hills, her voice a holy hush.

Birds still at her approach. Coyotes calm, leave off their laughing. The white noise of a far-away freeway recedes.

Early risers are waiting, holding hot liquids in prayer.

Holding hot liquids in prayer, we await her, our steam beaded by sunlight. Holding our vessels as if in offering, we have gathered here, what we hold fast evaporating.

We who have bundled ourselves into quilts and parkas and mittens and boots and stepped outside to see her. We who name the day.

She comes walking, her voice a holy hush.

She will walk all the roads of the world today—all the paths that switchback mountains, all the arroyos strewn with flood rush, all their eroded tributaries, and all the game trails too, before the day is through.

It’s the shortest day of the year, but she is in no hurry.

She’s in no hurry, the way we so often are. You can read the rest here.

Never miss a post! Subscribe to my newsletter.