Essays From West of 98: In Favor of the Solstice

Considering the important qualities of winter's darkness

Editor’s note: I have an exciting announcement! The good folks at Front Porch Republic kicked off the new year by publishing an essay from me. “Wheeler Catlett: Law and Community” considers the unique life of practicing law amongst your friends and clients, who are often the same.

This time of year, darkness feels inescapable. Daylight is at its most scarce. Darkness lingers well after the kids rise for school and it returns long before bedtime, even in a fairly tame latitude like Stamford. My friends who live farther north are used to dealing with mid-afternoon darkness. Travel to the polar regions and you receive only a few hours of twilight until eventually, it becomes weeks of nonstop darkness.

Sunlight is undoubtedly healthy for us physically, mentally, and emotionally.¹ The struggle from seasonal affective disorder is very real and difficult for some people. It seems like every time you turn around, it is getting dark again. If you have outside chores or if you just want to enjoy the outdoors, the peak of winter becomes quite limiting. It can put a person in a glum mood.

The great Western novelist Elmer Kelton once wrote a powerful line about West Texas. In a discussion between two characters about the merits of the arid, flat, and treeless country where they resided, one character said, “it’s a good country if you appreciate it for what it is instead of wasting it wishing for something else.”

Darkness is a natural part of our seasonal cycles. So what if we viewed it in this new light?² What if we appreciate it for what it is? What if the hours of darkness have their own positive qualities that cannot be found in the sunlight hours?

Paul Kingsnorth is a brilliant English writer who focuses on themes related to the environment, agriculture, the natural world, and man’s struggle with seemingly inescapable technology. On Christmas Eve, he wrote about the concept of feasting, with Christmas as one of the few remaining “feasts” on the Christian liturgical calendar still celebrated by most people. He raised a powerful point:

“A feast without a fast is a strange, half-finished thing…[the fast] sharpens the feast. It counts downs the days, it provides a communal experience…and most of all it trains the body and the mind to do without, in the service of focusing on something higher…[w]hat happens, then, if you feast without fasting? What happens if your culture encourages you to feast every day, because your economy is predicated on endless, consumer-driven growth?...It’s like taking a child to a sweet shop and allowing him to eat anything he wants. For a while it’s fantastic, and then it isn’t. More, it turns out, is not actually better. More just makes you sick.”

I was taken aback reading these words, while sitting atop my kayak on Christmas Eve’s first light. A life of feasting without fasting surely becomes miserable gluttony. Living within the measured cycles of life’s calendar is much more pleasurable in the long term. Similarly, I ask: the darkness of winter may give us the doldrums, but would we appreciate daylight without the benefit of the darkness? Have you ever tried for a restful night’s sleep in a room full of light? There’s a reason why non-stop light has been used to torture prisoners of war.

Though the darkness can be challenging, it can also be a important to re-centering us in a well-lived life. As we undertake the new year, may we consider living within the natural cycles of life and our individual places. It is how we were designed to live. As we do, consider these lines of verse from Wendell Berry, who reminds us that the darkness is quite an interesting and vital place after all:

To Know the Dark

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and the Rural Church and State and West of 98 podcasts. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to him wherever podcasts are found.

1. It is actual science. You should look up the use of fresh air and sunlight as a treatment for the “Spanish flu” epidemic right after World War I, among other testimonials.

2. I know, I know. I’m sorry. The magnetic attraction of the pun was impossible to resist.