Giving thanks...for comets, and water, and other things...

Ison - as it was

It's the shortest day. Direct opposite of the longest day. How lucky we are to experience both - the preciousness of light on this the shortest day, and the splendour of the seemingly endless light that creeps towards midnight on the summer solstice, and all that glorious warming sunshine. 

I'm presently at home alone with the two ladies and my imagination is captured by thoughts of Comet Ison - a comet that was due to pass by Earth a few weeks ago. Comet Ison was to potentially deliver access to elusive information about big issues - such as how life on Earth began, where did all the water on come from? Basic stuff like that ;) Did all the Earth's water come from the water that is locked up in comets and then released on their impact with the Earth over millions of years? Or, are complex molecules - such as amino acids - created in comets? Scientists have proven in the lab that the nuclear energy created by the impact of a comet on the Earth is sufficient to re-organise the bonds and atoms in simple molecules, to form more complex molecules that require high energy inputs, and ultimately to form some of the basic building blocks of life...like amino acids, the stuff proteins are made of and the like. If they - all those comets - hit the Earth and that caused amino acids to be formed....well, use your imaginations. Life on Earth - sure, but life elsewhere? Why not - just not as we know it. Mind boggling. Check out details of the Rosetta Mission for your own learning. Sadly, Comet Ison burned out when it was passing by the sun and we lost the chance to study and analyse in greater detail. So be it - but so disappointing for all the scientists looking forward to getting their gloved paws on precious rare data that would - that might - answer questions that are fundamental to the origins of life on Earth. 

It's tough being a scientist - first of all you're expected to know everything, when really your doctorate degree only qualifies you to understand how very little you know about even the most simplest and fundamental of questions about life. And yet we see it all around us, unquestioning in its being - we see it as we know it: life. It's there in our varied cultures, traditions, Christmas, seasons, families, love, beauty, nature, music.....it makes one feel incredibly small and incredibly insignificant in a vast universe, in a less vast galaxy, in a small solar system and on a beautiful yet (relatively speaking) teeny, weeny, blue green planet - Earth. It certainly makes me feel incredibly small and incredibly grateful. Grateful for the big things - like the Earth itself, and the water and the air and all those things we take for granted everyday - and grateful for the small things - the small things like....

• A fleeting glimpse of the sun on a solstice morning
• A bright blue sky tinged by pink on the distant horizon
• The rain falling
• The smell of fresh bread baking 
• Alannah's smile
• An unexpected kiss on the back of the neck from the one you love
• The wagging tail on a very happy Holly dog when she can't contain her excitement at getting to go for a run through the woods
• Christmas lights
• Time with dear friends that you only ever get to see at Christmas
• The warmth of your kitchen as you listen to the wind blow and the rain fall outside
• And most of all, the promise of more to come...

Happy Solstice and of course Happy Christmas everybody!

The Darkest Days

And so we have come to the darkest days. It happens every year and yet it always amazes me - all that uncompromising and dependable cyclic nature of the seasons (that is of course ignoring the impending prospect of ongoing climate change, but no doom and gloom in this post!). It's a harsh beauty - all that distancing from the sun leading to a dark and cold time, counter balanced by Christmas lights and beautiful frosty mornings...but all to be reversed come Saturday and the winter solstice (yay). 

'tis the season to be Holly

And why so harsh? Harsh because there is a stark absence of green and yellow and orange and red - the palette of the autumn that we love to watch in the easy days of October and November. Now there is only brown, grey, green and a tinge of blue - brown on the ground, grey on the trunks, some green in the trailing ivy (deceptively widespread in the woods and welcome shelter for blackbird and smaller woodland bird species) and blue in the sky, but blue only ever for precious minutes when the sun peeps over the horizon and the sky is refreshingly clear of grey clouds.  The storms of the last few weeks have completely stripped the oaks and the beech of the Charleville woods and the leaves are rapidly disintegrating back into the earth - the very fabric of the stuff that will bring forth next year's pale green recruits. Fresh faced leaves that will be ready for a season of turning light and carbon dioxide gas into food for the colossal stems that support them - the giant wooden towers of beech and the king oaks. I know - amazing really. Those small and unassuming power houses of green energy that turn light into sweet sugar. And all because of chloroplasts....but, I digress into the minutia...

It's also harsh because we have to wrap up in warm clothes and blanket-like scarves to shut out the cold and the damp. Sandals no longer work and wellies are de rigeur. Holly doesn't bother with either of course - she is an all-weather and all-functional kind of girl. And Alannah is amazingly immune to the cold - she is wrapped up of course but these days she stays awake on our winter walks, staring up into the broken canopy. What is she thinking? She is obviously stunned into silence because at all other times she is cooing and gurgling and 'talking' in her own sweet way. I try to talk to her about the trees and the birds, and the red squirrel that we've met three times now - always scarpering up the same tree - but she is blissfully immune to my breaking the silence. And all the while she just stares with those beautiful blue eyes - her, silent. It's all waiting for her to discover. 

And what about the beauty? Well, apart from Alannah and the bold Holly, the beauty is in feeling the biting cold breeze as we walk through the open fields, the warmth of the blinding winter sun when the clouds break and the feeling that spring is beckoning already - it's there in the knowing song of the blackbird - waiting beyond these darker, damper days. 

And what else do we do these days apart from get into the thick of it in the wintery woods? Very little I'm afraid. Bringing up baby is very basic - feeding, changing, bathing, coaxing to sleep, entertaining, distracting and then a bit of writing and emailing for me when I get a chance - laptop balanced on a cushion and writing with one hand over a sleeping baby. Some highlights of the past few weeks - the walking in the woods and the hinterlands of provincial Irish towns of course (over 100miles of the 1000 target), a successful heart saving exercise for Alannah's granny (my mother), various jaunts into town to catch up with friends for pre-Christmas coffees, the launch of Paddy Woodworth's great book Our Once and Future Planet (more of that again), and meeting up with work mates at the annual Biodiversity Action meeting. 

Holly is such a kidder...

I guess the greatest highlight of all is being a passive onlooker to the wonder that is a child's pace of growing. She is standing, rolling, watching, giving orders and basically, increasingly, ruling the roost. However, I'm reminded by the experts in the field of mothering that this status quo must change in order for peace and balance to reign. And so once Christmas is over, we must all - Holly and No. 1 Dad included - develop the elusive and all important baby routine....we shall have wait and see. In the meantime we'll stick with the policy of going with the flow, however chaotic that is. It always seemed to be so much more fun to me...

Making the Most of Darker Days

Winter sunset - blurring the boundaries between light and dark 

We wake in the dark here now, and we come home in the dark. The light creeps in slowly from the east from about 7.30am - not fully bright until after 8am - at which the time the car engine has been started and the slow winter ritual of teasing ice off car windows and mirrors begins. This morning-ritual ice-melting phase is pushed along with generous helpings of warm water from the Holly Cottage kitchen tap - steam rising as melting ice on car windows meets warm water meets cold air of December morning. And we shiver as we wait in the cold car for the windows to clear. Holly sits in the boot of the jeep wondering why there is no movement - c'mon let's go to the bog! - and I try to console myself in the knowledge that in 10mins we will at least have started the journey to work. However long it may take. It's the same story all the way up and down the street. Busy working class folk trying to get there on time, children wishing the snow would fall so school might be cancelled, and then me and the Holly dog sitting, waiting, car engine ticking over...waiting, waiting....watching intricate patterns of melting ice disappear as the sun too begins to rise over the roof tops of midlands Ireland.  

BRRRRR ;)

The cars crawl along the roads these mornings, ours crawls too. Too many skids and near misses, as well as several hits have taught me to be patient and respect the lethal power of ice and cold. And really - what can't wait for the cold claw of nature to thaw and release? Sure - there's the antsy boss or the cranky teacher, but you know what? There are forces stronger than them that must be obeyed.

And what waits for us? What promise of light before us? Truth told, another two weeks of this relentless dominating darkness and cold. Less than two weeks really. For by that time, on the holy day of December 21st, the tilt of our planetary home starts to reverse in our favour - sorry about that southern hemisphere ;) - and the light comes back. It is the winter solstice - the longest night or the shortest day, call it what you will.  In a moment of madness - nay, near insanity - I once climbed Knocknarea in County Sligo on a dark and foggy morning of December 21st. How I made it to the top unscathed, I'm not so sure - it's a slippy and rough climb at the best time of the year.  I guess I thought I might greet the sunrise on this pivotal day - welcome back the sun and all - and that might mean something more than just another day. But the fog took the hope of magical sunrise and killed it ;) 

Us enlightened folk of the 21st century know the story of planetary motion well of course and for most of us the winter solstice probably passes by un-noticed, un-significant. But in days long ago, one might never be so sure that it - the friendly warming sun that allows life on Earth - would return. More than 4,000 years ago the people of Newgrange in Ireland followed the path of the sun and moon more closely and the return and lengthening of the light from that day in cold December marked the gift to live another year, to sow and reap crops and revel in their harvest. 

And so too for us in the Holly Cottage garden. There is little in the depressed vegetable patch now save the cold-defiant celery and spinach, and the Brussels sprouts to be picked for Christmas dinners. The garlic must go in the ground soon - before the shortest day - so there is some real urgency to complete that task. But that is really it, for now. I generally use this time to sit back and reflect. To watch the light fade on another year, like the fading credits at film's end. To think about the good, the bad and the ugly; the relishing of beetroot; the relentless rhubarb; the unfortunate blight afflicted spuds; the astronomical bounty of strawberries....and the hours spent doing forward bends on endless rows of weeds. All the other stuff too of course - the trials and tribulations of work, the global travels - the general ups and downs, and sidewards bends and twists of being human.  

Morning sun - winter in Lough Boora

And so, you will understand now when I write that this week was tough for us lovers of the light. Next week will be tougher, most likely the toughest. But after that - from Friday week - the light will return and we will sigh relief and yell bring it on for another year. In the meantime for these short few days left ahead, we wait...and we wait...with patience and some surprisingly resilient philosophical endurance. Must be all that standing on one's head ;)

By the way - look out for some new music coming your way through the Holly Cottage production company. As a taster - check out this link - more on a rainy theme, something we get plenty of in Ireland...

http://www.reverbnation.com/craigwilkie/song/15426978-god-damn-rain?utm_campaign=opengraph&utm_content=song&utm_medium=link&utm_source=facebook

More to come.