I am out on a night walk. It isn’t late; darkness still comes early this time of year.

It is pitch black and very quiet. It is still, no wind, not even a breeze.

On these still winter nights, with the air so crisp and cold, sounds seem to carry more easily; the sound isn’t competing with the wind.

I can clearly hear the far-off noises. A dog barking, a couple of farms away. Our neighbor’s squeaky hinge. A truck, a mile and a half off, coming down the road.

Then Great Horned Owl is calling into the night, from our woods, now a half a mile away. hoo-h’HOO-hoo-hoo. hoo-h’HOO-hoo-hoo.

I feel a kinship with this owl. It, and its relatives, have lived on our property for at least 30 years.

The call of the Great Horned Owl is the very embodiment of January to me. When the Great Horned Owl starts to call every night, it is deep winter.

This call, to me, is synonymous with deep, penetrating darkness, and with cutting, piercing cold. It is the bitter, biting nights, when it hurts to breathe, that I begin to hear the Great Horned Owl.

Many people associate owls with wisdom, but for me, the call of the owl is the call of the mystery of life. It is sacred, and holy, to me. It resonates with something deep in me.

It on is the cold, clear nights, where the stars are an infinite tapestry, when I hear the owl. When I hear it, it is a call to me to stop and become utterly quiet, and to breathe into the night, and to feel my insignificance.

Knowing and feeling my own insignificance means that I can’t take myself too seriously.

To begin to know how tiny and how ephemeral we are, it is a gift.

It is a gift of the deep winter nights and the infinite black sky, and especially, of the owl.

What helps you know your ephemeral nature?

On my late afternoon walk tonight, our pond caught my attention.

This pond is a swampy kind of pond, and in some years we don’t even have a pond in winter. In those years, the pond just spontaneously appears with the fullness of the spring rains. Then it is called a vernal pond, and it is home to a large variety of toads and frogs and birds and dragonflies.

In the winter, all of this life is absent or dormant, and my interest in the pond lies in the fascinating variety of shapes and textures in the ice. It is like nature’s sculpture garden.

There are turbulent bits that are all churned up, and there are calm bits, where the surface of the pond is so smooth that you might be able to ice skate on it, although I have never tried.

And then there are things that have fallen into it, and stuff sticking out of the middle of it, in unexpected and unplanned places.

There are pathways that are never there in other seasons. It would be possible to go deep into the woods by walking over the frozen surface of the pond in winter.

It occurs to me that in many ways, this pond is like our lives. There are calm bits, where life is going along smoothly, and sometimes we are lulled into the complacency of expecting life to be like this, always.

And then, some turbulence comes in, which seemingly causes disruption in the flow, or, at least, in the expected flow, of our lives.

We run into apparent obstacles and stuff in our lives that we don’t plan and don’t expect.

And then, sometimes, there are pathways through all of it that are just as unexpected, perhaps where we are graced with ways through challenges that we could have never have anticipated.

This pond is really a lot like our lives.

It is like our lives in one other way, too. All of the churned up bits are on the surface of this pond. There is also a deep part of the pond that isn’t visible, where everything is still and calm, and where there is a base of the pond that is grounded and solid.

Just like the pond, we have a deep part of us that is below whatever is happening on the surface of ourselves or our lives. This part is grounded and calm. And it is always accessible to us, whenever we need it. It is there for us, no matter might be happening on the surface.

How can you access your inner core, that place of calm and groundedness?