But, happy solstice, and tomorrow the light begins its return.

These things I ponder as the kettle sings, and the good oak burns to red coals on white ashes. Those ashes, come spring, I will return to the orchard at the foot of the sandhill. They will come back to me again, perhaps as red apples, or perhaps as a spirit of enterprise in some fat October squirrel, who, for reasons
unknown to himself, is bent on planting acorns. —Aldo Leopold