The crack of a twig. The caw of a crow.
The long pause.
Moments of absolute stillness. The world is asleep.
This is my first walk in the park since the beginning of the rutting season. It’s unusual not to hear the consistent clack clack of antlers, reminding me of summers by the beach filled with Morris dancers jigs. The sound of their sticks thumping. A sound of the summer. Not much is known about the history of the Morris dancers and why they use sticks or hankies to dance. Some hypothesised that it could be linked to pagan rituals, where the sound of the sticks would ward off evil spirits. There is not much evidence for this, but if it were true, perhaps the antlers of the red deer arriving in time for the declination into Winter, the thinning of the veil at Samhain, is no coincidence. Perhaps the growth of the antlers is more than just a tool to aide their mission to grow their brood, but beautifully interlinked with the soul and the spirit of earthly ritual.
One of the most glorious aspects of returning to science research 20 years later is the ability to view it through the eyes of a deeper knowing. As I have delved into paganism, the lines between science and spirituality have become blurred. Nature is sacred to pagans (as it should be for all humans) and so it is to science. We spend our days trying to uncover the universe, to find its interconnectedness and its meaning.
The deer in November are a perfect example of this. After the summer solstice, as the light levels begin to decrease, messages are sent from the brain to the body’s master gland, indicating that a big change is on the way. A cascade ensues with one hormone triggering another, like the tapping of a domino, or the beating of a butterfly’s wings. The stags slowly begin to produce more and more testosterone increasing the growth of the antlers at a rate so fast it outstrips any bone in the animal kingdom. The growth rate can reach 100g per day in the summer. The growth is so extreme that it lead to forms of osteoporosis as minerals are stripped and reallocated to the antlers, immune systems wane, but such is the importance of securing a harem after the rut that this weakening is all worth while. The timings are so perfectly linked to the changing seasons, to allow the females to give birth to their young when resources are almost at their peak in summer.
In the rut, the stags exhaust themselves, hardly sleeping to protect their harem, their future descendants. Although calcification of their skeleton begins to rebalance, the extreme growth of the antlers, the physical demand, it exhausts them. Much like humans who continue to carry the joy of summer, and celebrate the harvest, overexerting ourselves before the end of the year. We reach the end of November tired and weary from our keenness to grow and develop, from chasing our dreams and what we hold dear in this life. We complain to our work colleagues of the darkness of the days and nights, but unlike the deer we continue to push ourselves through the winter months, even in some respects attempting to ramp up the energy.
But we are far from summer now, the Cailleach has long since descended. It is December. The woods are still. The Cailleach’s alias the crow makes itself known, reminding us that this is a time of darkness, and shadow, of building our dreams, of writing and hunkering down. Allowing our ideas to spark and hiss into existence, igniting a stream of consciousness that we connect before the spring.
This year it has been effortless to slide into the depths of the coming winter. Candlelit nights spent reading, honouring the sun, and bowing to the moon. Allowing deep rest. I feel as if I have been in a form of wintering all year. In the belly of the cauldron, being stripped bare, as if my own bones have been weakened, forcing the growth of a new reality. I have roared back into existence, eyes clear, heart open, with a new sense of what it is to be alive.
This new way of being means new dreams, new visions, new life is brewing. As Katherine May says in Wintering, I am “gently laying to rest a set of values I no longer have a use for”. I am igniting those that have remained dormant, that were carried away by the treadmill of life. Today, the stags serenity was almost palpable, they too have sunk into a form of deep rest. Even a relief that the work is done. I will continue to allow the stillness to seep in, strengthening my bones. For a form of integration is taking place, a melting pot of a year gone by and a year to come. Wintering, for me, has begun.