December 2011

We did it... the holiday has now come and gone. The annual crescendo of anticipation has peaked, leaving us time to pause, to breathe, to reflect.

At Rural Modern we would like to take this day to thank our new and returning customers for giving gifts of Furniturea this season. A gift of good design is one that keeps on giving, bringing new life and spirit to its surroundings, and rejuvenating the imagination of its cohabitants.

Whether you have been on the giving or receiving end (or both) this year, take time today to appreciate the tranquility of winter. Still, cold beauty provides retreat for the frenzied - much needed retreat, indeed.

The Winter Solstice is here! An imperceptible moment in time, occurring between 21st and 23rd days of December, that has captured the mind and spirit of people all over the world for thousands of years...

Today, it's not uncommon for people to confuse Winter's first day with the beginning the Winter's end. Because it is the shortest day of the year, those averse to our coldest season see 12/21 as a starting point for spring, with hours of daylight growing longer and longer until summer's end. 

Historically, the Winter Solstice has been a time of celebratory abundance - producing joy of a particular sort - a sort which has grown vulnerable to risk-averse responsibility. In times and places where people lived more honestly from the land, animals were slaughtered, drinks fermented, crops prepared for eating - all for the Solstice celebration, which marked the end of plentiful food and the beginning of winter-scarcity. Celebration at the time of imminent paucity?! Why not scrimp, save, abstain, deprive?

Among life's infinite lessons, there are indeed two sides to every story, even stories of hardship. For those living in fear, in want, in worry, take this day - 12/21/2011 - to access winter's other truth. Knowing that discomfort - even tragedy - is possible at any future moment, there is indeed wisdom to present-moment-joie de vivre, however cold it may be...

Having recently had the pleasure of trekking gently through a coastal Maine evergreen farm, the image of frosted moss, saplings, and dappled light through pine branches, is fresh, dimensional, and real.

In fact, the Maine woods can be so persuasively beautiful that they dim and fade our very notion of other forests. The moist, maybe frozen, Maine ground upon which you stand becomes the earth's center. Happily humbled, other far away landscapes remain just that: far, far away.

And yet, a more panoramic appreciation of earth's terrains is restored with relative ease - at least on the part of humans.

The old growth Douglas Fir trees of the Pacific Northwest are truly magnificent, awe-inspiring beings. Enormous, towering, massive - they are gentle giants, growing above and below ground, breathing quiet, vital breaths so that we, too, may breathe... so that birds, too, may nest... so that wind, too, may catch and carry seed... and so people may be reminded of nature's grandiosity, and our own significance as transient, yet sweet.

There is plenty to anticipate and dread over the winter holidays. We certainly idealize this time of year, too much it seems, and are easily distracted by excess, expectation, and the more-is-more-ism of consumer culture.

But if we muffle the noise-of-want, however loud it may be, our olfactory faculties may awaken and lead us to the season's finest gift: Evergreen Trees.

Of course, this gift is tied closely to Christmas, a cultural tradition shared by some, not all, and so this week's posts are less about Christmas than they are about one particular set of practices ~ the cultivation, harvest, and adorning of living trees that we bring from the outside in.

To most Mainers, Christmas trees are Balsam trees. Not only are they native and plentiful (offering sometimes-sparse, sometimes-abundant needled branches), but they contain in their bark, leaves and sap, a most divine scent that wafts and meanders through your home.

Balsam trees, like all evergreens, are wise, resilient beings ~ as opportunistic (sprouting suddenly in patches of light) as they are strategic (storing water for winter in waxy, insulated leaves). They will bend and bow, sucker and sprawl - they'll grow any way they can in pursuit of sun.

Whether your tree is wild and bare, or thick and rotund, or carefully shaped at the hands of winter's finest farmers, it is perhaps the best, most giving gift you'll receive all year.