Mid-Winter

It was dark, very dark.

In the mid-winter, the watery sun only showed herself for a few hours a day, and the world was covered in a barren, icy white and there was never enough for us, so we slept. I preferred to be alone, to spend those long winter months in my own space, keeping as warm as was possible in the shelter of a hollow log packed in with dead leaves and moss.

The smells of wood and earth were pungent, comforting, the smoke of a log fire drifted from somewhere in the distance. They were always dark, tough months. But just as summer, autumn, spring… the winter could be a season of beauty too.

My fur and fat were just enough to keep me going the whole way through, and I had to trust in that, trust in what I had and what my ancestors had always done. In those months we simply did nothing but survive.

I opened my eyes to blackness, I closed them to blackness. I sighed lightly and tried to sink back into the sleep that had momentarily escaped me. I needed to sleep. That was the only way to survive, and the only thing there was to do anyway. Being awake burned too much energy. Sleep. Just go back to sleep.

The world was colder then. During the long winters, certain parts would remain covered in feet of snow. Lakes would ice over, solid as the earth itself. As I lay inside my log and wished for sleep, images started to come to me. Maybe dreams, maybe memories. Maybe impressions of some undone future. I dreamed of other creatures, other lives. Of dark, wrecking grief and unbearable joy. I dreamed of some other time when the lakes no longer froze, where the snowflakes only just grazed the brown earth before melting away again into tiny rivulets.

I dreamed of humans, more and more and more humans than were ever here before, trying to claim the earth as theirs, which it never could have been. Thinking they knew better than the other creatures. Believing themselves to be above nature. I curled myself a little tighter, burrowed myself deeper into the hollow log, the leaves and moss pressing all around my body comforting, warmed by my own blood and heartbeat. My very life, giving my surroundings warmth, which in turn continued to give me life. Circles. Everything just keeps on turning and turning in circles.

I dreamed of what happens beyond humans. It’s not what they think. First they think they will save it, they believe they will stop their own destruction in time, but of course they won’t. Then they think they can fix it. And then, when it finally becomes clear that they can’t, they think the world will end. Every time they are wrong. Ridiculous creatures. They are a species so narcissistic, that they truly believe a world without them in it can’t exist. But I’ve seen it. And I know it’s not true. Life, the earth, nature, are stronger than they will ever dream of being. And life, earth, and nature will go on. Long, long after the last human is gone.

The seasons will continue to turn. New life will always come.