Winter Solstice 2023: Green Point
Winter Solstice. It’s an ending and a beginning. A point in time and a repeating. At the crux of an old year and a new one, a journey around the sun both familiar and yet unfamiliar. Imagine 4.5 billion years. This is about how many times the Earth has been around the sun. Our piece of it as humans is so small.
This past summer one of my sisters and I had the privilege of visiting the island of Newfoundland off the east coast of Canada. We hiked the east and west coasts and many points in between. The island is a place of contrasts. Boreal forest surrounded by ocean. Northern latitudes where Partridge berries* and bakeapple+ and semi-tropical rhododendron grow side by side. As islands go, it’s big. Count on at least twelve hours driving from L’Anse aux Meadows (where the Vikings first came) on the Great Northern Peninsula to the city of St. John’s.
Newfoundlanders are fond of calling their big island, “The Rock.” There is very little top soil anywhere, yet they love their gardens, rocky soil and all, and their root cellars. It’s not uncommon for people to use the ditches on either side of road to grow their vegetables. It’s here too that the northeast corner of the Appalachians, the oldest mountains in North America, emerge from the ocean floor. Where glaciers have cut fjords into the land and time has changed them from saltwater to fresh water lakes.
The island is built on Cambrian rock five hundred million years old. And in some places, like the Tablelands at Gros Morne, the earth’s dark green mantle has pushed through and oxidized into an eerie rusty orange, a kind of moonscape telling the tale of plate tectonics, the formation of continents and mountain ranges.
Geology comes from the Greek word for “earth” and “speech” or “word.” In other words, geology is earth talk or the story of the earth. The Desert Mothers and Fathers who lived in the deserts of Egypt in the 3rd century of the common era, often spoke of reading the Book of Creation. Creation was their everyday bible, their Divine Word. In some Indigenous cultures, rocks are honoured as grandfathers because they are old and hold stories.
That’s how I felt encountering Green Point on the west coast for the first time, where the Cambrian Period moves into the Ordovician. One of those places on the Earth where the connection is primal. Being in the presence of, being close to the beginning of everything, the beginning of time. So many ancestors, their stories flung out like a scroll across the ocean shore, telling of other oceans, other species, other continents, other times. A glimpse into the Earth’s many changes, restructurings, sheddings and reformations. The way time builds layers, leaves a seam stitched and a trail. Leaves a story. The layers revealing the first signs of complex life, life forms long extinct and others adapted, evolved. Still others, like ours, geologically and spiritually speaking, just emerging.
This photograph of my sister among the rocks captures how I felt about that moment at Green Point: Curiosity. Awe. But especially, humility (of the soil; of the earth). A context for all the changes I might live as an individual and the world’s changes in my lifetime and beyond. The realization that our time as humans on this planet is so fleeting, so recent. The land, so powerful. The miracle that is this Earth home. If we just listen to her story.
* low bush cranberry
+ cloud berry
14 Comments
Pearl Gregor
December 20, 2023As you say so well, Audrey, the time and place of humans is so very minuscule as compared to the time and place of the earth. We are so small, so unimportant in the face of the geology of what/where we live! It is time, far past time, for humans to consider the damage we have done and continue to do to the earth, the home where we live and breathe and have our being! As we enter the winter solstice, there is a hinge between light which is just beginning to grow again and the overwhelm of the darkness just beginning to wan as we begin our trek to the light of spring, new roots beginning to grow into shoots.
The moon time brings forward the next full moon! Soon, we will be another half way around the sun. Growing, and diminishing, and then again and then again. Another trip around the sun. Let’s hope we learn from this next trip! More than we have ever learned in the first million trips!! Blessed be on this next trip, Audrey. Thanks for remind me again of how many times we make this trip!!
Audrey
December 21, 2023Thanks, Pearl, for this Solstice meditation. It is a day for taking stock. May we work towards peace with all our Earth relations.
Kate
December 21, 2023Audrey, thank you for bringing context as we make our way towards a new year…
Audrey
December 21, 2023You’re welcome, Kate. Journey well!
Anne
December 21, 2023Thank you Audrey for the delight and privilege of journeying and glimpsing through your words.
Audrey
December 21, 2023So good to hear your words, Anne! To journey and glimpse… That’s everything isn’t it? And enough.
Byron
December 21, 2023I’ve been there and it is awe inspiring. Saw a rock where the fence abutted both sides. Alas I never saw Gros morne. Think it was still being excavated. Reading your book the Glorious Mysteries. First full moon since 1977 on Christmas, the year after I was there.
Audrey
December 22, 2023Thanks for your reflections, Byron. And for sharing your experience. It is a world onto itself, isn’t it? Newfoundland. Thanks for the reminder of the full moon on Christmas. I didn’t realize it had been so long. Maybe twice in a life.
Carolyn Pogue
December 24, 2023Hello Audrey,
Yes. Yes. Amen.
We all need to lie down on our Mother every chance we get. Let her hold us for a while so we can calm down.
I am writing from under the full moon and Lights on Christmas Eve on the PreCambrian Shield in Yellowknife…. and remembering visits to the other Rock.
Audrey
December 24, 2023Dear Carolyn, Spoken truly from the Shield. Thank you for the reminder of the night skies too.
Janice Pelletier
January 1, 2024As always, Audrey, beautifully said! Thanks for sharing.
Hugs, warmest thoughts and wishes for a wonderful year filled with everything that makes your heart sing!
Audrey
January 1, 2024Thank you, Janice. I do love to sing. Happy New Year to you too!
Henny Flinterman Vroege
January 3, 2024Dear Audrey:
Thanks for your seasonal message for the Winter Solstice, and thanks so much for how well you’ve articulated your thoughts of the strange and wonderful island that is Newfoundland. I’ve explored there a few times, and you brought back memories.
Best wishes to you for this new year. Be well.
Audrey
January 3, 2024“Be well.” A simple wish that says everything. Thank you, Henny.