The battle of winter and summer

Recently, my daughter and I have been watching a Netflix series called "Tales from Arcadia: Trollhunters" by Guillermo del Toro.  It's fascinating, full of mixtures of different fairy tales and folklore.  I even saw the name Baba Yiga tossed in there which tickled my funny bone since my wife is Russian and I heard lots about Baba Yiga over the years.  Learning a new story for a kid always involves reenactment of the story, and since I'm the only one around who is able to play with her, I get to reenact it with her.  As always is the case, the story involves our own personal twists.  My daughter has been enthralled by the movie Frozen and probably was influenced by this in making the decision that instead of being in command of the sun, she would be in command of the ice.  And naturally, I had to be in command of the opposite of ice, which was fire.

This choice of opposites quickly reminded me of the Norse Muspell and Niflheim.  The void between these two places was called Gunnungagap and it was here, where the battle between ice and fire gave birth to life.  Having lived in Northeastern Minnesota for nearly two thirds of my adult life, I'm quite familiar with this battle between hot and cold.  The battle results in the formation of abundant water and the quick destruction of roads.

Today, this all took on a greater meaning for me.  All of existence is conflict.  It is the story of the world every where we look.  The cycle of the seasons is a battle between summer and winter, which corresponds with a battle between the light and the dark.  A twenty-four hour period is a battle between the light and the dark, the strength of which corresponds with the season and our location upon the earth. 

We exist.  And if we are to exist, we must come to an appreciation of this conflict, and use it to our advantage.  Many things do so.  The winter months are a time of rest for many.  Trees lose their leaves, store energy in their roots and wait.  These cold days of rest provide the opportunity for apple trees to produce apples for example, requiring a number of hours of temperatures below 45 degrees Fahrenheit just so they can produce apples.  Bears take the opportunity to rest, and give birth. 

On a daily basis, many use the hours of light and dark to benefit their needs.  In more temperate climates, hours of light are used to create while hours of dark are used to rest.  In hot climates, the hours of dusk and dawn are often used to create while the darkest and most light hours are used for rest. 

While plants spend much of the spring and summer months growing, a great many take this abundance of energy to consume plants for their energy needs.  And so down the line does the taking advantage go.  Some really take advantage of these opportunities by storing energy for later use.  Some great examples of this are the many rodents who store seeds for the winter months.  And those who produce alcohol..

This battle is both infinitely small, and infinitely large.  We can see the battle under petri dishes, and we can see it over scales of time.  Civilizations come and go because of this conflict.  Their period of relative light, or darkness, is countered by the opposite period.  And if the civilization in question hasn't learned to recognize that there are periods of growth countered with periods of rest, then they have doomed themselves.  In the great words from the motto of the Stark family in Game of Thrones: "Winter is coming."