What do trees and grizzly bears have in common?

According to forester Peter Wohlleben, who wrote The Hidden Life of Trees, bears prepare for hibernation by eating and eating to grow fat and sustain themselves for months of sleep with no food. And would you believe it, deciduous trees do the same?

Where does the food come from to sustain the sleep of trees over winter? It comes from their own bodies.

The leaves of trees are mini protein-makers, busy all through the green season making protein and sugars to feed the underground growth of roots, and the above-ground growth of trunk and branches, flowers, fruit, and seeds.

Shutting off those mini-factories

Before going to sleep for the winter, trees need first to stop working. And so deciduous trees shut off protein-making and release their no-longer-wanted leaves to the ground. Now they are ready, not exactly to grow fat, but a tree-ish equivalent, as they draw down those nutrients from their leaves in order to store them under their skin.

Have you ever held a winter tree? Try for yourself. When I hold my trees in winter I sense into a solid, grounded feeling in the trunk. The trees are fat and full. The feeling is quite different from holding a spring tree, with its surging sap, or a summer tree with its leafy abundance.

So yes, trees sleep, peacefully.

It’s a little different for evergreen trees

In Aotearoa New Zealand, where even in the South Island the climate is temperate, native trees are mostly evergreen with only about twenty two species being fully or partially deciduous. But that is another story. [If you are in the northern hemisphere where the trees are greening, here’s a summer newsletter for you from my archives].

For now, I want to focus on deciduous trees which are numerous in Aotearoa and mostly found in the northern hemisphere of the lands of my ancestors. These are the trees that sleep.

Trees that sleep have something to teach us all.

What can sleeping trees teach you?

In winter, are you able to withdraw from being highly productive — or at least from expecting to be as productive as you might be in spring, for example? Can you resist big initiatives, knowing that this is not the best time for enterprise?

Can you accept the slowing of energy, along with the slowing of your metabolism, in winter?

Can you feel a sense of kinship with the sleeping trees?

Resting and conserving energy is the task of this season. For many, this is a welcome change and something of a relief.

Drawing back creates perspective and allows planning to take place.

How might you sustain yourself in winter?

Here are some tips:

1. Take a winter retreat, or restful holiday. I’ve done this over past years by booking myself into a retreat centre to be cared for as I tuck up with my books, journal, and coloured pencils.

It feels natural to begin a new seasonal year with rest. This year I’ve been retreating at home.

2. Seek soul food. For some, this will be through reading, music, or restorative yoga. For others, it will be concerts, comedy, and choirs. For others, movies, making/mending, and mirth.

I am reading some good books. I am listening to music, and resting while the rain rattles the windows and thunder rumbles overhead.

I am making no demands on myself after a time of rich harvest. After much focussed work my new book is at the printer’s and I can relax and fill my reservoir in the winter quiet.

My book will be launched at spring equinox, when nature is quickening and I will be too. It is time to take in, not to give out. I am taking my own advice!

And so I am resending this newsletter from 2021, with a few extra words to update it. Its message is still fresh and perfect for this time when I am lying fallow and bereft of new words.

I will also repeat my own Winter Attunement home r*itual for deep nourishment.

3. Make something. Find a project for your hands, to take you off-screen and into connection with your body. Some like to knit, sew quilts, or attend to mending, in the age-old tribal tradition of tending and preparing. My ancestors would mend tools and fishing nets in winter, weave on looms and carve wood. I am slowly practising the long poi. It is teaching my hands patience.

One person I know is keeping a visual diary, and another has started a written journal. If you have the impulse to create something, winter’s slowness will support you.

Be well, be at peace, be patient.

The rush of spring will soon lift you up into busy intentions and new challenges. Enjoy the gifts of winter while you can, and lean into a sleeping tree.

Winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know how to find it.

—Henry David Thoreau

Would you like to go deeper into winter, and find the nourishment that lies in the depths?
My Winter Attunement home r*itual will guide you to your inner treasure.