Earth Pathways Showcase

Old Woman Winter is a memory keeper, a tradition bearer and story spinner; a recounter of the frozen thread of yarns long spun and wound upon the spindle of myth and memory. She preserves the stories of yesteryears and bygone ways in the memory of ice and deep geological time. She is holder of the hidden lore of land; dark knowledge of root, of seed and soil, the ancient alchemy of death and decay and deep initiation. Her stories are woven with winter words; wrapped in wild weather, swaddled in snow, spun by storm and etched in ice. Her words infused with woodsmoke, spoken softly by fireside and candle glow, and whispered to the crackling flames when the cold is on the ground and the Earth falls into its deepest dreaming. On the longest of nights, sit with her, share stories and dream by the fire and in that deep, deep womb of darkness, there is conceived a first glimmer of light. Barren and cold, the winter womb is yet fertile with possibility, with hope; for midwinter stores in its deepest depth the seed of summer, incubating the light. Old Woman Winter cradles the story of the seasons, uttering them softly back upon the breeze, so that the wintered land is already beginning to dream the spring.

Old Woman Winter © Rachel Digby 2022