the situation

Swollen shades of gray horizons — wide, hanging low over dampening heads: winter in the Pacific Northwest again, and all I can think about is how distressingly natural it feels to be dreaming about tucking into a bowl of soup, then bed, by no later than 7 pm.

Winters here are reliably dark, cold, and — since we’re lucky enough to be sandwiched between an ocean and a mountain range — significantly wet. As an adaptive species, humans have taken this well enough in stride: thousands of years of village tradition gave us gathering around the hearth, Starbucks gave us seasonal drinks, and we called it a fair trade for not being able to feel the warm kiss of the sun for five agonizingly bleak months a year.

Douglas fir with cone. photo by John F. Williams

A walk along the shore displays an environment gone dormant. Naked maple, alder, and subdued cedars line the bluffs, and the seasonally cloudy water of the Salish Sea is eerily clear and devoid of the algae that turn the depths into a rich soup. This ecosystem follows an order humans know well enough: When the dinner table ceases to be laid, no one comes to eat. Better to stay hunkered under the twiggy bedclothes of your nest or in your rocky intertidal hideaway then risk using a limited energy supply to forage for an uncertain yield.

As with any time of year, getting food comes with trade-offs, but the risks can often be higher than the rewards during the winter. In genetics too, however, necessity proves to be the mother of invention. In this seemingly interminable waiting period, the cells of flora and fauna alike have developed a variety of ways to cope with the dearth of energy inputs. Local perennial plant celebrities like douglas fir, cedar, and big leaf maple direct their carbohydrates to their roots for safekeeping, and the water in their tissues to intercellular nooks and crannies where it can freeze without damaging fragile organelles. In the aquatic world where hovering at the surface waiting for a weak sunbeam proves to be too uncertain a gamble, diatoms such as Skeletonema Amphora trade their buoyancy for thicker silica skeletons and sink into the mud of the seafloor, where they’ll stay safely burrowed until stormy weather upwells them back to the surface for a renewed lease on life. While slight seasonal drops in seawater temperature are confined to surface and shallow waters, ocean-dwelling fish still find exothermic harmony with their surrounding environmental conditions — albeit less dramatically than freshwater species — by slowing down their heart rates, decreasing oxygen and food needs, and putting a consequential moratorium on heightened activity.

Regretfully, we are not fish, tree, or planktors; making it through the Big Long Dark is a lot more complicated than clues from the suspended world around us would have us believe. If we superficially withered like the tree, went into slow motion like the fish, or buried ourselves like the diatom all winter long, by the time spring came around, half the populations’ Notes apps would read like a melodrama of Shakespearan proportions with the kind of woe-is-me lines that can only be evoked when you spend 10 hours a day mournfully gazing out a window pounded by rain. We are humans, inherently social creatures, reliant on a web of shared knowledge and a penchant to play for playtime’s sake, to give us the requisite mental acuity and problem solving capacities that keep us alive; and absolutely, unequivocally prone to antsiness. Without an outlet for the discontent, guaranteeing bodily comfort by entering a systems-wide torpor often comes with the extra expense of being lulled into a lethargy of mind, body and spirit.

Nighttime tidepooling with biofluorescent anemones. Photo by Holly Weinstein

the solution

Last November my friends and I went to our local beach on the Olympic Peninsula in pursuit of this unique nocturnal microcosm, hoping in particular to find that eight-armed gelatinous icon, the Giant Pacific octopus. I’m a marine science educator by trade (please excuse the tidepooling bias), and I have to credit these aliens for being my gateway drug to all things under the sea. There’s something about the obvious otherworldliness of their trailing suctioned arms and undulations that draws us in; their mirrored interest in us when we stare at them has a humanizing power to transform them into inimitable creatures often as unsettling as they are mesmerizing.

No octopus, but a mottled sea star. photo by Malaika Rosenfeld

Giant Pacific octopus. photo by Malaika Rosenfeld

Just kidding. Can’t have more than one dream come true at a time. Aside from the fact that we’d rudely busted into its hiding spot, I’m fairly certain it didn’t care about us or the momentous encounter that was taking place one way or another. Hoping to get in its good graces after gently replacing the rock, we caught a shore crab and placed it outside its hiding spot as an offering. We watched for signs of life for another good 10 minutes (none were seen other than the sacrificial crab scuttling away) then left content in heart and mind, if rather damp in boot.

Brittle star. photo by Erin Merkelin

the silver lining

While I do encourage everyone to try squatting in a 45 degree puddle of seawater to peer under rocks for the novelty, it’s the plucky mindset involved in the game that I hope to employ as the main takeaway. Even if all we ever found was a traffic jam of dock shrimp, making these weekly outings November to March subtly turned down the collar I’d shrank behind to stay untouched, necessarily separate, from the harsh outside environment. I began to engage instead as a participant observer of the winter world — and the rewards were invigorating.

As we sink into another cycle of cold, dark, and wet — and if you find yourself invariably drawn towards scrying the deeper pools of your mind — remember that this is a unique opportunity to learn from the life around us. Sleep deep, tucked under a mountain of quilts, take time to direct your energy with intention, but don’t forget that there is a special kind of joy in moving through a sleeping world. It’s a joy that quietly metes out secrets of soil and surf to the keen observer, complementary to the bustling, overt merriment of a summer ecosystem; less rowdy, perhaps, but characterized by plenty of compelling observations to keep restless legs and minds occupied all season long.

Happy Pacific Northwest winter, y’all. Time to suit up.

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Thanks so much for your interest and your support.