My parents got married on the year's longest night, and once we were old enough to realize what the extra hours in a honeymoon bedroom were all about, my brother and I thought that was pretty clever of them. While some cultures--and some individuals--prefer to celebrate the slowly returning hours of daylight after solstice, I'm happy to honor this moment of fullest dark. So many more-than-human creatures have night vision capacity, or hollow-haired winter coats, or cozy lodges protected by a layer of ice above an underwater entrance, or other neat tricks that give them some advantages in night ops. Nocturnal living is real living for many, and while I may be at a disadvantage, I'm in awe of those capacities so far from my own.

With the gift of a small bonfire, I can comfortably celebrate the magic of difference. Like browsers and grazers fitting on the same landscape by eating different types of plants, diurnal and nocturnal residents double the capacity of a landscape to provide space, by divvying up time. Beyond the burning crackle of the aged pallets that no longer hold stacks of dried forage in our hay barn, owls call out, courting from dense boughs of spruces long ago planted as homestead wind breaks. Their voices can't be heard inside our cabin, windows closed with quilts drawn over them to keep the cold at bay. Stars I seldom take time to admire sparkle the snow, and coyotes sing from behind a neighbor's stalled line of ancient vehicles, secure habitat for fat voles.

Despite the more relaxed pace of a farm in deep winter, I recognize all the under-snow activity continuing unabated. This solstice, I salute tardigrades and nematodes, mice and shrews, and especially the roots and root hairs and mycelia that serve up stored summer sunshine to the trees towering above, their breaths in direct exchange with ours, out and in, out and in. This solstice, I salute regenerative farmers--like pocket gophers and grizzlies--turning soils just enough to aerate and not so much to destroy its living structures. I celebrate humans learning to listen, and listening to learn the songs and dances not visible to our daylight eyes. So many ways forward, if we just pause, like the sun at its solstices, and ask what other creatures know and do.