A Solstice Postcard from the North

Ice, bones, and what is on my loom.

Happy Winter Solstice/Christmas/Holidays to you! This week’s letter comes not on a Sunday but on a Thursday to allow for focusing on time with my family on Christmas day. Due to the fact that I’m already traveling for the holidays, it is also a more photo-focused email than writing-focused. I know a lot of you are here because you are interested in what it’s like to live in the far north, and these photos capture a bit of early December in the north woods. I hope you enjoy these snapshots of our frozen-yet-still-snowless world, and I’ll be back on New Years Eve (a delicious day to share some writing) with a reflection of 2023 and dreams for 2024.

I was fortunate enough to get another rare wild ice skating opportunity this December. With a group of fellow travelers, I skated into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, a protected wilderness area of lakes, portages, and beautiful landscapes. We skated nearly ten miles on one large lake pocked with rocky islands and covered with thick, mostly smooth ice. It was cold—my toes were numb within minutes—but unbelievably fun and beautiful. The novelty of skating such a long distance will never wear off.

Wild ice is not just a joy to skate on: it is also a joy to peer into. In places the ice is clear as a sheet of glass. In others, it looks black and infinite as the universe: the bubbles are stars, the frozen plants are comets. In this photo, my face and bright orange ice picks can be seen too, no matter how hard I tried to get a shot without them. Now I like their presence, putting me squarely in the wilds of outer space too, my face a blurred moon.

For a year now, I’ve had the strange honor of watching a coyote go through her entire death process. Last November, I first found her curled up under a light blanket of snow, as if she was just sleeping. I expected her to still be warm, but she was gone.I still don’t know why or how she died: she looked healthy and whole. I purposely pass her final resting place on my walks. Because of the bizarre lack of snow this winter, I’ve had some extra time to visit her. I always stop to greet her and say a little prayer over her bones.

This is what work has looked like during this quiet season: color and chaos. I’ve been weaving my way through the excitement of a new large tapestry on the loom and the uncertainty of exploring a new concept. I always seem to choose to try new designs and concepts in macro instead of doing tests on small samples, like a smarter weaver might do to save on materials and time if the idea doesn’t work out. But after weaving small gifts for holiday sales I needed something big on the loom, something deliciously slow that would buoy me through the long long nights leading up to the solstice. This piece was absorbing to make in just the way I wanted. I would look up from weaving a row and realize it was suddenly night outside. I would check my phone to see if I’d missed dinner time, only in true solstice fashion to realize it was barely 5 pm.

With gratitude,

Emily