Nesting

The Cathedtral Santiago, May 31, 2008. It's about 9 p.m. and
the sun hasn't even set. It did finally get dark around 10 p.m.

I’ve been walking at lunch but not getting out at all in the evening. It’s so hard for me to do much of anything productive when I get home from work now that it’s cold and dark when I get home. I seem to have started hibernating already! Which is not a bad thing at all.

I love Eastern Standard Time. I like coming home from work in the dark. It just feels so good to come home and nest. Eat, get a shower then early to bed where I snuggle up with a book under my big fluffy comforter. My room is finally chilly enough so I can really appreciate the warmth of that great big comforter.

It just feels right, when the weather is cold and the night long, to come home and hibernate. Maybe it’s part of an ancient human instinct, part of a natural rhythm honed when my northern European ancestors spent their winters huddled up in a cave or somewhere, waiting for the return of the warmth and the light, doing what they needed to do to survive their harsh climate.

I don’t need to hibernate to ensure my physical survival. If it’s cold, I just turn up the heat. When it gets dark, I flip on a lamp. But I feel now it’s so important to keep in step with those natural rhythms, just another lesson learned on Camino. Time doesn’t matter. Eat when you’re hungry. Sleep when you’re tired. Walk at your own pace.

I haven’t always felt this way. I’m a lifelong night owl. Running here, doing this or that and never really getting anything done. I didn’t walk in the evenings at all last fall or winter, despite the "training" mentality I had at the time. When I walked the Camino, I tried to alter my own natural rhythm to match that of my companions. It doesn’t work. Everyone needs to do their own Camino.

Maybe I’ll continue to get an evening walk in as fall turns to winter. If I don’t, it’s okay. If I opt not to walk in the dark when it’s cold I’ve opted to do something different and just as good. Give my body a chance to rest and regenerate so it can grow even stronger. While my body restores itself, perhaps I’ll read. Give the mind a bit of exercise. I still have two Camino books yet to be read!