Hibernation

Winter came suddenly this year, or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention. In the distraction of the rich warmth of the fall leaves and the lingering heat of the sun that autumn brought, I didn’t see the darkness closing in or the chill returning to the slow mornings. 

In the glow of autumn’s leaves, winter arrived.

I didn’t notice until one afternoon when I found myself sitting in pitch darkness, with nothing but the glow of my laptop screen to illuminate the room. I scrubbed my eyes, wondering how I’d managed to lose such track of time, sure that it must be into the evening – seven, eight o’clock, time disappearing into whatever task I’d been immersed in.

It wasn’t yet five. Winter hours had arrived and still I clung to the hope that a little more light might surface into each day.

The lack of light inflames a battle that I am fighting (or losing) with myself. The relentless October through March struggle of trying at once to keep being everything, always, to be engaged and productive and motivated, and all the things that come so much more easily in the summer months. All that, against the deep, human urge to curl up and rest. To restore and regain the energy lost in the months preceding. To hibernate.

Our lives aren’t designed in such a way as to be able to take four months of the year in which we simply rest, recover, and recharge. Yet, isn’t entirely in our nature to do just that, when the light fades and the dark nights draw in? 

Usually, my winters would consist of a slower pace, at the very least. Contrasted with the spring and summer, through which I would barrel in a haze of work and travel and social commitments, the winter came as a time to slow down. I would turn inward, spend more time at home, focus on writing and quiet projects in solitude. Quietening the buzz of the city that said, come, do this now, that was so hard to ignore in the heat and vibrance of the summer.

The quiet moments have been few and far between.

Last year broke this pattern. Last year, I escaped the darkened and grey skies for a month, fleeing south to Australia and Fiji. Yet while the sun and daylight revived me, to an extent, it didn’t undo all the need for rest. I still had the weight of the busy summer from my own hemisphere with me, and no amount of sunshine was going to make up for a real need to slow down. To sleep. To regain a bit of the mental clarity I lose when the only thing I have time for is to move one day to the next.

Coming back only made it worse, suddenly thrust from the long days and bright mornings into the dark and gloom of Toronto in January. All it took for me to forget about the rest I needed in the winter was for the days to grow that slightest bit longer. All it took for me to start looking toward the calendar and think, well, maybe this year…

The dark, grey days have arrived to Toronto.

It’s nearly December and the first snows are dancing in the air. The days are short and my body struggles to wake to the darkness of the morning. And again, I am locked in a battle of trying to hibernate, trying to recuperate, while also preparing my body for a week-long hike to the highest point in Africa.

One of these things is not conducive to the other.

I start to wonder if I will ever learn to slow down. If I will ever lose this relentless urge to keep going, to do more, to be more. If I’ll ever shake off this feeling that to stop still for a second, to just simply rest, is somehow a failure.

But rest is as much a part of the process as is the progress. I cannot exercise nine times a week if I do not rest my muscles in between. I cannot write new pages on my screenplay if I do not take time to wander, to muse, and to let the ideas develop. I cannot face each day if I do not sleep.

Time has always seemed so fleeting, and with it the fear that there is just too much I want to do before it is all gone. But the more I try to do, the more I realise that if I spend all my time thinking about the next thing, I’ll never take time to enjoy the thing I’m doing now. 

Tomorrow will come but today will not return. So as I try to balance these last few weeks before my climb, I’m trying to live life a little more like the squirrel who lives on my roof. Who basks in the sun from his perch in the gutter, tail wrapped around himself for warmth; taking quiet moments before returning to his busy work of gathering leaves from the piles on the ground. Work and recovery in equal measures, with no layer of guilt needing to be associated with either.

And with each day, a little closer to the longer days ahead, coming back around once again.