Dark Days and Bare Bones

Tiredness and trees - 16/12/23

It is not as cold as it should be and there is still red on the stunted rose bush in my garden. I have not been outside as much as I’d like, and I have only seen home in the darkness. When I arrive at work at the moment the sky behind the industrial estate is deep purple or pink or deep dark grey, but there is the orange of a rising sun there that makes me smile. It took till Friday for me to realise it wasn’t the sun at all, but a street lamp, sodium striking through the branches.

Where I work at the moment is a strange mix of wild and natural, grim and industrial. There are huge grey hangers and endless roundabouts, and there is also a canal with a weir and multiple lakes, fallen trees, coots and mallards and herons. Usually I try to spend time in the wild of it. Usually I get to work early to walk, even just for 10 minutes, amongst the green, through the grass, beside the water. My boots are always muddy and I start the day with a secret: I have already been on an adventure. But this week I have not. I have been deeply tired, endlessly busy, fully consumed. Sometimes that is just how it is. Before my day starts I sit in the car and stare at the silhouettes of branches against a deep blue dawn. When I walk from one building to another in the course of my working day, I look up and I see the bare branches on the other side of the high solid fence. They are trees I have walked beneath in the mornings, have watched turn and then empty themselves of leaves. Now it is only their bare bones left and I am tired, and even though I need them, right now I need rest more.

In my garden at home I hacked ivy from the shed, pruned anything evergreen, searched for berries. I emptied the lot on my living room floor and bound it with gardening twine to a wreath base. I hung it on my door and didn’t see it in daylight for a full week. This dark time of the year brings many things. I am ready for stillness, but the time is not yet. One more week.

Then I will stop and sleep and find my way back to the outdoors. I will spend half of January by the sea and come back to the canal behind the tall fence. I will walk along it in the mornings and look out for the heron, the egrets, the cormorants and geese. For now I have the tall tops of the trees, bare bones edging me in, reaching above the man made barrier, and the gulls circling and calling overhead in the white winter sky. For now it is enough.