Where Are You, What's Going On?
Tools for Orienting to Winter
This weekend my family and I went sledding on Mt. Hood, and we were blessed with an abundance of fresh, powdery (and forgiving!) snow.
I haven't gone sledding in probably 25 years, and it was so fun! One of the things I loved about it was that we had to slowly trudge up a huge hill in deep snow in order to enjoy about 5 seconds of total bliss. In a culture rife with instant gratification and payouts, the efforting to enjoyment ratio of sledding felt like a nice counterbalance.
When we weren't shredding fresh gnar (is that what the snowboarders say?), I was taking in the breathtaking scenery of this remote Winter wonderland. There was so much untouched snow that any disturbances could be seen very clearly. Whether they were human tracks, dog tracks, or little divots where the snow had sprinkled off of a branch, what had happened in any given area was quite obvious.
Since our time on the mountain, I've been thinking a lot about tracking and how easy it becomes in the snow. Winter is a mysterious season, but it only becomes unnavigable if we're trying to track with Summer sensibilities.
In the Winter, our compass needs to be way down in the depths of us, where our wisdom and our Water pools, navigating from the lower part of our abdomen where we get that gut sense about things.
From that place, the tracks are often quite clear. And if there's been a snowstorm overnight and all of the tracks we found yesterday are covered over, we can just pause and wait until more appear.
If we moved through a Winter landscape with a Summer tracking orientation, we might be looking for a path to be obvious and well-lit when it's just not. Or we might be looking for Bear scat and fur that's been under ice for two months now.
Part of being an adult in these chaotic times is remembering that our tracking skills need to change as the seasons do.
Spring is coming and the light is growing, but I'm finding that it's still helpful to stay quite low to the ground, discerning moment to moment with tools that can help me navigate nuance and mystery. This is helping me to make sense of the signs that Life is sending me so that I can remain conservative with my energy and not wander too far off into deep, heavy snow.
Today I thought it would be nice to share a couple of my favorite ways to soul-track in the heart of Winter:
An activity called Choosing with the Body, which is adapted slightly from a process I learned about from Carmen Spagnola in her Numinous Network. I've used this a handful of times when I need to make a decision and it has never let me down!
Inquiries with a tarot or oracle deck. Here are some questions I find helpful to bring to the cards when I'm trying to orient and track:
What is most important for me to know about this decision?
To what extent is Option A aligned with my best and highest good? (Can ask the same of Option B, C, etc.)
What will be the natural outgrowth if I pursue Option A? (Can ask the same of Option B, C, etc.)
What is my next right step?
I hope these two strategies come in handy the next time you're orienting and wayfinding, whether it's this Winter or beyond.
If you find yourself interpreting signs and tracking the soul's movements regularly, I bet it's because you're an edgewalker: someone who can travel in the in-between, translate between worlds, and hold many things as true at once. My podcast episode this week is an ode to you and to the sweet Deer, who are edgewalkers with us. You can tune in to To All the Edgewalkers here.