With a slew of major holidays on the horizon—Christmas, Diwali, Festivus, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, and the Winter Solstice—I decided the focus of this week’s walks would be conifers. There are some lovely and impressively large spruces in the residential neighborhoods not far from Santa Fe plaza, but I want to zoom in on the macro scale…get up close and personal…nose-to-nose with a pine cone…

I spy a green spine…

These evergreen trees are so exquisitely fresh and verdant during the time of year when much of life has gone to ground, sheltered beneath an insulating quilt of fallen leaves, or folded inward to guard against Jack Frost’s pranks.

Is it any wonder many people want to bring that fragrant greenery inside, and then bedeck the boughs with all manner of shiny objects that make the season bright, reflecting and magnifying the limited candescence of these shortest days of the year (in the Northern Hemisphere, at least)?

[Thanks to the following photographers for making their work available through the Creative Commons license: Jeff Kubina, messycupcakes, Quinn Dombrowski, Alex Lehner, ~lzee~by~the~Sea~, Enora Josse, and Holly Levey. © 2017 Sidewalk Zendo. Reprints welcomed with written permission from the author.]