The winter solstice arrived quietly this year, as it usually does around here. Blue peaks rose like folded blankets against the sky, layered and patient, the same way winter has stacked itself on this place in years past. The day tucked itself inward, becoming small and careful. Even at noon the light felt borrowed, a pocket-sized sun smiling from just above the ridgeline, its rays loose and playful, mostly at rest on the mountains.

I have written before about this day, about how it never announces itself with certainty, only with a sense of having reached the bottom of something. The solstice does not knock. It simply finds you already inside the longest night, sitting quietly, waiting for you to notice.

For now, the sun does not blaze or command. It grins. Its wandering lines spill outward like hair or roots or thoughts, reaching over the mountains and into the forest without urgency. This feels right for the solstice. The sun is still here, even on its shortest day, but it is relaxed about it. It knows the schedule. It knows it will be back. It always is.

Below, the trees gather in dark silhouettes, firs and pines standing shoulder to shoulder. Some are nearly black, some softened into green, all of them anchored. They look like they are listening. Forests always seem to understand timing better than people. I have trusted them before on days like this, and they have never been wrong.

Winter always feels like a negotiation between patience and faith. The mountains wear streaks of white like remembered snowpaths, evidence of where water and time have traveled before. I recognize these shapes. I have followed them through other winters, other solstices, when the cold pressed in and the light felt thin but persistent.

We light candles not because they conquer the night, but because they echo that smiling sun: a small, friendly presence saying, “I am still here.” This site has accumulated a fair number of these small lights over the years. Notes made in the dark. Observations written low and slow. They add up.

This is the hinge of the year, drawn simply but honestly. From here on, the light begins its slow return, not in leaps but in increments so small you have to trust they are happening. Tomorrow will be longer by a breath, by the width of a pine needle, by one more playful line added to the sun’s reach. That has always been enough.

The old stories knew this moment mattered. They built fires, told tales, sang songs that looped and curved the way those sunrays do, circling around the same idea. The dark is not an ending. It is a holding pattern. Against it, even a simple smile shines.

So tonight I greet the solstice the way I have before, and likely will again: quietly, attentively, grateful for the pause. The night can have its full say. The sun is already practicing its return, smiling above the forest.

Happy winter solstice.

May your mountains remain steady, your forests attentive, and your light return slowly, surely, and on its own time.