Just as we store up fuel and food during the warm months to sustain us through the cold, we can store up plans, dreams and visions during the cold months to inspire and guide us when the leaves again return to the trees. It is a time to look back and pack up the past, then look forward to form the future.
Plot out your next garden or book or painting or wedding. Sketch the new boat or the new out-building or the new world. Dream up new schemes to save money or energy or time or the planet. Envision a trip beyond the far corners of your town, or beyond the far corners of your mind. In a warm window, start seeds of broccoli and beauty, cilantro and silence, hollyhocks and hope, cabbage and compassion, peas and peace, to enrich the dreams of a bleak midwinter.
Some Glad Morning: Holding Hope in Apocalyptic Times. Wainscott, New York: Pushcart Press, 2020, p. 108, "She Sleeps."