SOLSTICE RITUALS

THE TASMANIAN COLD DOESN’T STOP MAGGIE MACKELLAR SWIMMING IN THE SEA – IT’S A PARTICULAR PLEASURE, SHE SAYS.

IT’S WINTER, AND I’M TORN between welcoming the quiet and dreading the cold. It’s the same every year: the short, dull days; the frigid air like a slap against bare skin; the constant job to keep the fire stoked and the wood basket full; and the knowledge that down here in Tasmania, the season only gets stronger as the days grow longer. So June always feels a bit daunting. We rush towards the shortest day and then have to face the fact that we won’t be warm until mid-september.

For more than a decade, I’ve made a ritual to have an early morning swim on winter’s solstice. There’s an increasingly popular annual solstice swim in Hobart that is part of the Dark Mofo festival, but swimming with a crowd is not for me. Instead, I set my alarm and get up in the dark. The dogs swarm out the door in front of me and I load them onto the back of the ute. I swim – or rather, plunge – all winter, but there is something about marking the shortest day facing the sun rising over the water. It’s a special sort of magic.

I love the beach in winter. The sand is quiet, empty of the busy hooded plovers who build their precarious nests in a scrap of sand and whose tiny chicks are at the mercy of a host of predators: dogs, or a big swell, or a storm. But the plover parents are always optimistic and each year they raise several clutches. The little families have flown north, though, and the only prints on the sand other than my own belong to a pair of sooty oystercatchers and the occasional Pacific gull. Early in the morning, the temperature gauge on the ute can hover around five degrees and the water (a chilly 13 degrees) is warmer than air. But the cold is like a reset. These icy, solo swims, when the water swirls with the fizz and pop of winter swells, are one of the treasures of living on this coastline. And when I get out, I take something of the ocean’s energy with me.

If I haven’t already done it, I will come home and rearrange our central courtyard into its winter configuration. I pull the couch in front of the old Saxon firebox, and lay a sheepskin over the rug between the fire and the couch. The sheepskin is from an English Leicester given to me by Fiona Hume of Arundel Farm in the Derwent Valley (you can buy her washed ones from her website). It’s as far from the fine wool we grow as you can get, but I love the texture of it. I have a fancy one on the back of the couch, but this one is for the dogs, and in the evenings the floor by the fire is a mess of snoring bodies.

There’s a deep creativity down here in winter. It’s just a matter of throwing off the surface gloom and looking. It’s there in the bare trees, their sculptural branches snap-frozen in the frost. It’s in the languid curl of wood smoke rising from the chimney; it’s in the dark morning and the quick drawing-in of the night.

I curl up on the couch, feel the warmth of the flames push back the cold night air, see the old teapot I keep on top of the fire steam softly, gifting the air more moisture, and I know that it will be here; that the idea for a new book, an article, a newsletter will rise.

Follow Maggie on Instagram @maggiemackellar_ and subscribe to her newsletter, The Sit Spot.