“Oh the Summertime is Coming”
The Winter Solstice - cold and dark - so what better than to light a fire, drink some alcohol and have a party
On 21st December we passed the winter solstice, the earth’s longest night. Well that's what we Northern Hemisphere dwellers think. Of course our antipodean cousins have been simultaneously celebrating their shortest night.
The key thing is that winter is on its way out, old hat, almost over! Well perhaps not quite.
Day-lengthwise maybe, but temperaturewise - afraid not. Why? I hear you all wine.
Well until the sun climbs back up into its big old sky not much heating is going to happen here in the frozen half of the planet. Down-under they are of course laughing because the reverse is happening there. I’ll bet they’ll be barbequing prawns on the beach for at least another 3 months.
Not all the birds have flown south for the winter (or is it a fish? seal? perhaps a woodland spirit)
However here at Wilderness Wood we don't mind and to prove it we have been celebrating big time (Saturday 21st December) at sunset. More flaming torches than an Olympic running party, lots of singing about shadowy spirits, sleeping trees and owl choruses, poetry broadcast by winter spirits high up in trees and of course lots of alcohol.
A spirit (one of the non-alcoholic kind) announces the start of the earth’s longest night (northern hemisphere)
Down in the woods things are perhaps a little different. Deer are ‘with-child’, sap has been drawn down into tree roots and all the smarter migratory birds are taking it easy on sunbeds and sipping Martinis by the pool.
Give it a couple of months though and things will look quite different - lots of bambis will be roaming the wood ravaging our valuable stock of crimble trees, hazel trees will be exposing their male and female genetalia (flowers silly!) and those expat swallows will be back telling everyone what a great winter holiday they had.
(Left) Male hazel flowers (Right) female hazel flowers (lambs’-tailed catkins)
In the meantime wrap up warm and have a great Christmas and 2025.
David Horne