A damp heaviness hovers over the forest and around the yurt. It has been a companion for 10 days or more. That amounts to A Long Time in the Fog. Day after day, my smoke streams sideways, both from me and the yurt chimney, lingering longways, chewing its cud so to speak, before deciding where to drift next, mingling with more damp midwinter air.

As I watch from the forest, on my return home, I have an irrational desire to climb the roof of the yurt and start scrubbing. This is irrational, not only because it is, as it sounds, dangerous, but also because my own biorhythms are at their Very lowest ebb as well.

"Scrub! Make a dent in this relentless darkness."

Then I remember there is a season for rest.

Effort sounds impossible anyway, during the midwinter season of quiet. So, instead, I stare an ponder, "what could weeks of misty rain and damp possibly serve during this balance of dark and light?" Sometimes January comes with a bright bigness, and days of sunshine snow, and fast crispness in the wind. This one has arrived as December ended, with determined pervasive fog.

So I ask again, what could this weather mean? What could days and days of misty dampness inspire? What can be born in this darkness? Here is a good question: What dreams can better mend with the ally of darkness and moisture? What dreams are shifting, allowing room for a new arrival? My imagination begins to understand this language and seeks out fruit bearing bowls to hold the visions hidden here in the dark.

It is said by indigenous member speaking on First Voices Indigenous Radio that to be able to speak in Lakota, one must be able to use one's intuition. The language of the heart, the language of listening and responding. Days and days of dark brings me to the edge of no words and only the language of intuition. Not much remains in the fog.

Here, I remember that Anything in the deepening loaming is fecund with possibility. A Dreamtime. We can imagine a world reborn. A Spring resplendent with hope, passion and health.

I don't know what you are dreaming in your midwinter nights, I shall start by dreaming a planet singing a multitude of songs, of music for the earth's blessings and return. I shall dream of return, knowing in this dark The Earth is Dreaming a new beginning too, she is dreaming a feast with us all, a dream that encompasses and embraces us all.

For now, I am still in the dark, dreaming my next quest, being gentle with myself and drinking warm steaming bowls of hope.