Nature’s Cue to Pause This Time of Year

Are you ready for the change in seasons or are you counting the days till spring??

Like leaves slowly accumulating in a thin carpet over the ground, this small sooty black and penny brown creature is a perfect cue that we are in the ‘winter arc’. A time of hunkering down and reflecting on what matters most, setting intentions, and dialing in on something specific before the year’s end.

It’s as if to get a head start before we have to listen to a very stately Number One on the wall that proclaims as ferociously as a winter storm that it is a New Year. When it really should be in March, not January. But that’s a rabbit hole I will save for another day.

Why do I stop for something so small? Maybe because it reminds me to slow down, too.

Turtles in the road, I’ll stop traffic for. Naturally when I spotted this banded wooly bear on his own road to winter I helped the little fella stay safe. He has his own agenda (and he doesn’t use a calendar)… But why stop for something so small?

I was out on a walking/biking path in my town, and I moved him from the gravel to the safe side near the wood line. But why did I even bother? Maybe because I wished someone would pick me up once and while and give me a boost in life. Maybe because helping him felt like helping myself ease into the season. Because it reminds me of seasonal shifts are happening, whether we like the dark or not. I love winter. Not gonna lie. Colder the better for me. Coffee in the colder months even tastes better to me!

Maybe helping a caterpillar cross the road is my way of learning how to move through change myself.

Many children back in the day probably found these tiny mobile prickly things and maybe even played with them, watching them crawl around their hands while waiting for the bus. Maybe I even did that as I child. I don’t remember. I do remember my bus stop was strangely enough, at the wood line of a forest.

This small harbinger of colder weather to come has an amazing adaptation to “freeze” solid by producing a cryoprotectant in its tissues. Hunkering down before the time to emerge. They have been dialed in long before we have!

Furry forecasters? Maybe…

Lore has it that you can predict the severity of the winter to come by “reading” the colors on this caterpillar. Something about the more brown or the more black the harsher the winter.

Whether they predict the weather or not, it’s still worthy of recognition and a little moment of helping him along. They are soon to be, an Isabella tiger moth once they emerge.

Gardening for wildlife in my own space has certainly made me more acutely aware of the wildlife in the greater spaces that I frequent. So it came as no surprise to me when I saw this small bristly caterpillar that I felt the need help as if it was in my own yard. Stay safe my friend!