The Reindeer at the Edge of the Aurora

The reindeer is the working animal of the far-northern winter practitioner. A patient case for what the creature offers — patience, distance, the kind of attention that survives a long dark.

The reindeer is the animal of the long polar winter. The Sámi, the Nenets, the Evenki, and the other circumpolar peoples have lived in steady working relationship with reindeer for at least three thousand years, and probably more. The creature has been domesticated, semi-domesticated, hunted, herded, ridden, eaten, mourned, and named in religious texts older than most written records. It is not a witch's familiar in the medieval European sense. It is something quieter, more functional, and more deeply embedded in the ordinary life of the people who live where reindeer live.

This post is not an attempt to claim the reindeer as a generic spiritual symbol available to anyone. The deeper meanings of the reindeer in the living indigenous traditions belong to those traditions. What is available, plainly, to any practitioner who has ever seen a photograph of a reindeer against an aurora-lit sky, is the observation of what the creature actually does — and what that posture can teach a practitioner who is in their own long dark.

What reindeer do in winter

Three things, observably.

One: they conserve. The reindeer in deep winter slows down. The metabolism drops. The body becomes more efficient at extracting nutrition from the small amounts of lichen available under the snow. The reindeer is not waiting out the winter passively; the reindeer is actively being a winter version of itself. The version is smaller, slower, and more attentive than the summer version.

Two: they move steadily. The herd is on a slow long migration through the season, finding the next viable patch of lichen, moving on when the patch is exhausted, never stopping completely. The movement is not dramatic. The movement is the practice. Distance covered per day is not impressive. Distance covered per season is hundreds of miles.

Three: they stay near each other. Reindeer in winter do not scatter. They keep visual contact with the herd. They graze in groups. They sleep in groups. The herd is the survival strategy. The lone reindeer is the dead reindeer, in most cases. The practitioner can extrapolate.

What the practitioner can borrow

The reindeer-posture, in working terms, is what a practitioner can adopt in their own long dark — a hard year, a long grief, an extended illness, the depressing middle of a multi-year project. The instinct, in modern culture, is to push through the long dark with caffeine and force and dramatic gestures. The reindeer-version is different.

Conserve. Slow down. Eat smaller meals. Sleep more. Do less. Move steadily rather than in bursts. Stay in visual contact with the herd — the small set of people who are also in their own long dark or who care about the practitioner's. Do not isolate. Do not dramatize. Do not perform the recovery. Just keep moving, slowly, in the direction of the next viable patch of lichen.

The small practice

For practitioners in a long dark season: a small daily reindeer-check.

Once a day, the practitioner asks themselves three questions. Has the practitioner eaten today. Has the practitioner moved today, even briefly. Has the practitioner spoken or written to one member of their herd today.

If all three answers are yes, the practitioner has done the reindeer-work for the day. The day counts. The practice continues.

If any of the three is no, the practitioner does that one thing, in whatever small form is available. Eat something simple. Walk for ten minutes. Send one text to one person. The reindeer-work is small. The reindeer-work is also reliable. Over a long winter, the reindeer-work is the entire reason the practitioner makes it through.