What a Drag it is Getting Up

November 11, 2022
Owl Feather Farm, San Juan Island

No, this isn’t your 19th nervous breakdown. It’s just the cycle of seasons. But it’s worth reflecting on what it means within the prism of the human condition. We’re having a hard time getting up because it’s dark, it’s cold, rain is whipping sideways down your shirt collar and, well, blah. “The Big Dark,” Pacific Northwesterners call it.
In response to these stimuli our ancestors—those who are of northern latitude heritage—spent most of their time sharing space in longhouses or other secure shelters. Athabaskans in the North Woods built sturdy log cabins; Pacific Coastal natives used cedar for massive longhouses or, farther north, carved underground homes along protected inlets. Similar homes sheltered people in Northern Europe, Siberia, Japan and Greenland.
trees in front of sunrise clouds after getting up

Light may seem distant, but it's there

Once, years ago, I was grousing to a neighbor about how listless and unambitious I felt, around Thanksgiving.
“Eric, you’re supposed to feel like that,” she advised. “It’s autumn. Winter’s coming. Relax. Read a book.”
A Big Dark refuge is not only meant to protect us from the cold and sleet, gale and ice, it’s for the interaction and introspection that make us better people. A world’s worth of oral histories have been passed into the future this way… Consider the tale many Native American peoples tell that their long-ago ancestors shared this continent with horses. “Scientists” scoffed, but it turns out America’s oldest citizens were right, and humans and horses walked here together more than 10,000 years ago.
What a drag it is getting up

The comforts of home are spiritual and physical

That’s 500 generations of legends told in winter longhouses during the Big Dark. So this is not a time for mordant lassitude. It’s for sharing, caring, growing inward, helping, healing, telling, learning. “I came in from the wilderness/A creature void of form/Come in she said I’ll give ya/Shelter from the storm,” wrote Bob Dylan.

This is a precious, marvelously meaningful time. Use it well!

—Eric Lucas

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