The Gifts of December

We pull out of Wuksachi Village and head up the General’s Highway in Sequoia National Park.  It is cold, clear and very quiet this December morning.  We find the small, modestly marked pull-out and park. Our intrepid little Subaru is the only car there; looks like we’ll have the trail to ourselves.  We climb out, pull on caps, mittens and extra layers of fleece, and doublecheck the water bottles. Starting above 8,000 feet, we flat landers will need the extra hydration.   Ready, we launch our ascent to Little Baldy Dome. 

Little Baldy is what the hikers call a low-effort, high-payoff peak—four miles up and back—and just 1000 feet of climb. But the views from the top?  Reportedly out of this world.  

We climb a couple of miles of switchbacks, eventually rising above the tree line.  In every direction, there are oceans of trees below us: ponderosa pine, incense cedar, white fir, sugar pine and of course, the mighty sequoias.  Yesterday, we got schooled by Gordon, our stellar guide from the Sequoia Conservancy. Gordon described the lifecycle of these trees, from seedling to sapling to juvenile to adult, and ultimately, the thick-trunked, broccoli-topped monsters known as “monarchs”—the largest living thing on the planet. He described how they are different from their redwood cousins, and how wrong our forest management was for over a century, suppressing all those fires.  Sequoias need fire to live, he says, and especially, to propagate.  Without it, seeds are not set free from seed pods.  In about 100 years, says Gordon, we’ll be paying for this ignorance.  There will be no juveniles.

The trail flattens and we walk through a new growth forest.  Unlike the open, windswept vistas below, this is a cathedral of green filtered light.  Before long, we catch sight of the Dome up ahead, and scramble the last quarter mile over a granite face.  Suddenly, we are there, and “glorious” doesn’t begin to cover it. We are alone on top of the world.

To the east are the jagged peaks of the Division Range, a flank of the Sierras that separates the national forest from the Owen’s River Valley and is home to Mount Whitney.  To the west, the central valley of California lies sleeping under a thick blanket of tule fog.  Far in the distance, the Coast Range rises like ghostly sentinels guarding the Pacific Ocean. 

I stand on top of the rock, radiant alpine sun streaming down on me. At first it seems completely, utterly quiet.  But slowly, imperceptibly, a subtle soundscape rises. The low moan of wind through the trees. A single crow cawing in the distance.  The drone of a far-off airplane.  The quiet buzz of insects.  I stand, quietly waiting. I never want to leave.  

December’s a hard month for me. I miss my child terribly this time of year.  Around the end of October, the joy machine fires up, and fills me with dread. Music, movies, parties, jingles, food, excessive consumption, enforced jollity.  Memories. Regrets. Ghosts.  It can be profoundly alienating to any grieving person, and not just the bereaved. Any loss can cause grief. At the holidays, it can bring a feeling that everybody else is at a party you’re not invited to. 

We all find our ways to cope.  Mine is helping other bereaved parents.  Together we think ahead; anticipate; plan.  What will be hard for you? Who will be hard for you? What should you keep? What should you let go? There is no rule that says you have to do things the old way, or at all.  When you are up to it—and only then—what kind of re-invention might be right?

My counseling work doesn’t counteract all the damage done by the joy machine. But it does replace it with something purposeful.  Sacred even, sometimes.

And this year, to my surprise, I realized something else.  I hate December.  But I also kind of love it.  I have learned to embrace its darkness; to appreciate the short days and long nights. To see it as a fallow time that I need as surely as I need the sun.  It has become my time to go inward, to restore my energy, to stop striving.  A time to just be.  It’s why we ran away to Sequoia National Park in the middle of the holiday season. This time of year, that Park embodies a state of stasis. 

I have learned to view December not as a month, but as a series of individual, crystalline moments. I had one of them standing on a granite mountaintop.

Here are some others.

In a sudden dawn rainstorm, a puddle came alive in the street in front of my house.  Maybe it was a trick of the early morning light, but the drops pelting the surface created bright shards of energy; boiling and bouncing like there was a living thing in there, fighting to get out.  I half expected some kind of water creature to rise up and reveal itself. Now, whenever it rains in the early morning, I return to the puddle to watch what happens.

One night I sat in my yard as darkness fell.  I miss the night skies of New Mexico, the inky blackness encrusted with stars. But in December, even our light-stained city skies become more revealing.  As the night deepened, I found Jupiter, Saturn, Polaris; Cassiopeia. I thought about a story that Gordon told during one night walk in the mountains.  It was about how an indigenous people came to trust that the bodies of the heavens are always there, even when we can’t see them. It’s the very definition of faith, isn’t it? The stars are there, and so are our ancestors.  There's an Eskimo proverb that speculates: Maybe they aren’t stars at all, but openings in the heavens where our lost ones shine through and down upon us with love, to let us know they are happy.  The words comfort me every time I look into a night sky. 

As I ponder this, the darkness sends another gift.   Whoooooooo-whoo-whoo. The great horned owls are back; sentinels in the tops of the redwoods, watching over my neighborhood. Their low, melodious voices sail through the night, calling, answering, calling, answering.  Like they have a secret no one else knows.  

Another night, I dreamed that Carson and I were standing on the bank of a river, and he was urging me to dive in and swim away with him.  I hesitate.  My stuff, I say—my clothes, my wallet—they are back on the shore.  C’mon Mom, he says. It’s just stuff. Don’t worry.  Follow me.  And so I do.  I leave my stuff on the shore, dive in and follow him under the water, a mama fish swimming after her baby.   Doesn’t take a dream analyst to figure out what this one means.  The dream warmed me the whole next day.

And then there’s that moment that happened, in one form or another, over and over again, with my grief clients.  When, after pain and tears and fear and sadness, the bereaved mom or dad I am working with takes a deep breath and says Thank you. I think I am ready.  I think I can make it through.   

December is different now.  I cannot say I prefer it this way.  But I can say it has its gifts.  I just had to let go of the old to make room for the new.  For secrets that live in the dark. For life that churns beneath the surface.  For the things that will emerge if I just give them a little time.

And I repeat it like a prayer:

I think I’m ready. I think I will make it through.