Winter solstice – the longest night – one end of the seesaw from whose embers daylight begins to claw back… it is dreamy, surreal time in the mountains, when contrasts of autumn are overtaken by misty monochromes of cold… for darkness is a time of reminiscence, and as the solstice approaches it gains in strength… and the mind travels far, as if to perceptively escape the cold, and the body goes about the chores in a perpetual state of absent-mindedness…

The solstice has myriad significance in spiritual thought… good and evil, yin and yang, moon over sun… combined with the precision of astronomy, it is one of these phenomena where science and religion become symbiotic… working in tandem, they chart the course around the sun on a canvas of emotions and beliefs, a reverence of the elements and celestial forces that guide them from afar…

The winter blues, and cultural apparatuses to counter the drop in serotonin… festivals that harp on bright colours to fend off the wistfulness of the white… metaphors of rebirth to spark hope in times of desolation… the solstice is historically etched as an exercise in patience as civilizations perished and rose again, the diurnals persevering against the grimness around them to live another day till the first tweets of spring revived the frizzled flora…

All is not gloomy with the solstice though… complementing the harshness is the crispness of the sky, an invigorated air… the contrasts, in fact, are pushed from the fore to the horizon, where on a clear day they glisten, cold but with a hint of camaraderie… there is a sweetness, a warmth to the melancholy… slivers of light slip through the darkness to remind one of the finiteness of sorrow… it’s a time of quite energies that surrounds the solstice, of introspection and internal awakenings, of bonds among brethren, and transitions from comatose to cheerful…

Musings on winter solstice and mountains…