NEW YEAR'S Blessing

Around 2:25 p.m. on Dec. 21, which is the beginning of my New Year, I was out driving to the University of Southern Maine library to pick up a book. I was on State Rt. 25 listening to MPBN (Maine Public Broadcasting Network), when suddenly the announcer said: “The Winter Solstice arrives in Maine today at 2:35.” On the spur of the moment, I decided to keep driving until 2:35 and then stop – wherever I was – and celebrate the Solstice.

So I drove into Gorham Village, past USM, out of Gorham Village, and into rural countryside: fields and forests mostly, with an occasional house or farm spotting the snowy, softly rolling landscape. I kept wondering where I would land at 2:35. Would it be in a wilderness area, or one with buildings visible?

At 2:34 I pulled off the road between two snowy fields. The snow bank, however, kept me from pulling off very far, and it was a little unnerving being so close to the road, with other cars (although few and far between) whizzing by. Then, about fifty feet further I saw a spot where more snow was cleared off the road.

After pulling up to that spot and shutting off the car engine, I looked around. On either side of me were woods, no buildings in sight. On the right was a line of berry-red brush sweeping the roadside, and behind it a thicket of young white-birch trees striking up out of white snow.

On my left were deciduous trees, stark and bare of leaves. And then I spotted Her. Almost immediately left of my car but a few yards ahead, stood the Goddess. She appeared in the form of a mature tree with three branches striking off from the same nexus, and in the same plane. She looked just like a woman with both arms raised. Both of her arm-limbs were bent at almost exactly the same spots and angles: slightly inward at the elbows, and slightly out again at the wrists. I could even see in the middle trunk, at the place where all three trunks met, a roundedness that formed Her head.

I don’t remember seeing trees like this before, with three equal-sized limbs taking off from the main trunk at the same place, and in the same plane. And with side limbs that formed mirror images of one another, and with bends that conformed so neatly to human arms, elbows and hands.

As I sat there, I received this message: “The light will come again.” The standard but breath-takingly glorious Winter Solstice promise. But then another message came: “I will return, too.” I, the Goddess, will return. Surprisingly, I wasn’t surprised. I know She’s going to return. Nevertheless, it was a gift to hear Her say it.