After a three-week absence, our cardinals (the birds, not the clerics) have resumed their cheerful trilling, settling in against the gray and nearly-winter backdrop as the land’s self-appointed feathery morale officers. They are nature’s audible punctuation marks and easier to spot among the low sycamore branches now that the leaves have made the ground their final resting place. If sound had a color, the cardinal’s song would be as brightly scarlet as its plumage, reminding us that joy knows every season and please don’t be discouraged by the temporary monochromatic appearance of things. It’s easy to take in their lessons on both impermanence and contrast.

I get that for some of us, winter is too stark to bear in its entirety and so wandering south for a few months seems the right course of action for one’s mental salvation. Save for a budget that doesn’t allow for such relocations, we’d be right there with them in February when the bitter cold is on the edge of wearing out its welcome. But…we made a promise to our slice of the earth’s bounty, in front of seventy-five or so of our friends and family, that we’d be true to this place and all her manifestations of beauty, no matter how harsh or inconvenient to our comforts. We’re here for the Duration, however long that lasts and however many sunrises that grants us. Given our own imperfections that she bears with such patience (farm implements stuck in the ground along the field line, amateur attempts at master-level gardening, not even seeing the dew so carefully arranged on the spider’s web that stretches between the two chicken coops), it’s only fair we not head down the driveway when the temperature drops below freezing. We’re in this together; it’s right we should soften our steps when we walk anywhere on her grass-covered skin.

And so I did this morning, taking my time as the paths beckoned me forward into our naked acres. Earlier this week, I came upon a small doe in the northeast corner of the field, dead beneath a stand of thin blue beech and black walnut saplings. Deer gun season ends at sunset today and I’m left to wonder how she landed in our care this way. Lying there with no trace of violence to mark her sleek fur, she could just as easily have been in the deepest of slumbers, motionless and unconcerned about the busy world going on above her graceful form (I’ve known sleep like that in my lifetime and wish it upon anyone nettled by the stresses of our human enterprise). Thanking her for her presence among All Living Things, I continued on, a whispered prayer of acknowledgement left on her forehead. Today, she was still there, untouched and undisturbed.

Whatever summer kept hidden is now laid bare in autumn’s last days. Grape vines hang slack and thick from the trees they’re slowly strangling, wild raspberry stalks shoot up from the spent grass in one last growth spurt before the first heavy snows knock them down. The palest lavender, they look artfully impressionistic sprinkled among the remains of July’s once-yellow wingstems and goat weed. Multiflora rose thickets look thinner now but are just as treacherous if you lose your footing on the fallen black walnuts and land in their unforgiving and thorny embrace. If not for their vitamin C-rich rosehips, I’d be tempted to clear out the lot of them. They do slow down poachers and trespassers, though. I shall try to befriend them in the spring.

Perhaps this season of undressed and unfettered calls us to do the same (at least metaphorically). North winds are known for stripping away the chaff, the coverings that have served their purpose and now need to move On. We’ve got all these hours indoors and in the dark for the next few months; a little contemplative introspection would be good for our souls, sloughing off what doesn’t matter anymore, lightening the load, so to speak. It’ll feel good to shed some layers before tucking in under the warmth of a season known for coziness and be glad for the letting go. When snow covers everything, we can still frolic in the flakes, toss handfuls at each other or no one and inhale deeply, ready to reinvent ourselves into our best possible versions.

Lest that sound too balanced and indulgent, I asked a cardinal (bird, not cleric). He said it was ok.