Winter Solstice reflections: light and shadows from the Amazon

Tonight, I pulled on a warm sweater and a woolly hat, stepping out into my back garden. The night air, sharp with the bite of December, welcomed me as I lit a small piece of copal, its resinous body collected in the Amazon rainforest and gifted to me by one of the guides who walked alongside us there.

The smoke curled into the darkness, its scent—earthy, sharp, ancient—wrapped around me, carried by the stillness of the longest night. I closed my eyes and let the taste of the copal linger on the air, inhaling deeply. In that moment, my garden dissolved, and I was back in the Amazon, where humid air clung to my skin, rich and alive, and the jungle breathed in ways I could only hope to understand.

I remembered the sounds: the symphony of birds, insects, and rustling leaves, all layered like a conversation I was not fluent enough to join. The scents: damp earth, the faint sweetness of flowers, the green bite of living things constantly in bloom. And the taste of copal smoke, not just on my tongue but in my entire being—a reminder of the connection between human and more-than-human worlds.

The Winter Solstice is a night for darkness. It is the longest night of the year in this hemisphere, and yet it is not only about the night. It is also about the promise that the sun will rise again. The flame crackling and spitting as it consumes the copal reminds me of that light, the one that never truly disappears.

In the five short days since I returned from the Amazon, people have asked me, “What is it like?” I have tried to answer. I have tried to describe the impossible density of green, the way the canopy seems to shift and breathe. But the truth is, the Amazon is blurry in my memory. Not blurry in a forgotten way, but blurry like a dream—a vivid one that lingers, its emotional edges sharper than its precise details.

This time last week, I had just left the rainforest. I spent that night in Leticia (Colombia), bone tired yet brimming with something I couldn’t name. The jungle was still blooming inside me. It blooms still.

I don’t yet know what kind of year 2024 has been. It hasn’t been bad—not bad at all—but it has been uncomfortable. Blurry, like my memories of the Amazon. It has been a year of shifts, of moments when darkness dissolved into vivid light and then back again.

The week in the Amazon was one of those shifts. The nights there fell heavy and so loud. Loud wasn’t something I had expected. Everything in darkness felt thick and cloying. And yet, the days rose up with a brilliance that felt otherworldly. Light, free, bright. In the rainforest, I was part of a collective—not just the human collective, but something more expansive. The forest, the rivers, the air itself—all of it felt like kin.

And here I am now, on this solstice night, standing in my small garden with the stars hidden behind clouds and the copal burning. The jungle is a long way from here, but its lessons linger. 

The dark is never just dark; it is the space where light begins. The solstice, the jungle, the year—they are all blooming still, each in their own way.