It’s hard to know how to take the loss of winter. Most people are happy and congratulate each other on it. They smile on twitter and face book, crowing over the warmth and the lack of snow. And I, twisted this way and that, sorrow in my heart. I miss the bright red of the cardinals in the snowy bushes or the dear plump grey caped juncos hopping in and out of the tracks my husband and I leave in the snow after we fill the feeders. I miss the intense cold of winter, when it’s so cold that no one is out and when I go to the river, each sound is crystal clear. The downy woodpeckers sound off as do the chickadees and I listen to breaks of ice in the river as it hardens and forms and floats. Winter is cold and it’s bitter but it has a blue beauty of all it’s own and I miss it.
Due to winter not being here, I can take walks everyday in my jeans and my tennis shoes. It’s a little cold but not bad as long as I take a quick pace. Everything is brown and olive. The trees are. The goldfinches are. The big windmill overlooking the park is. People bike furiously past me every day. They’re mostly men and mostly frown. Biking seems hard work even without snow.
The days pass and they are easy on all of us. The temperature hangs around forty and it makes so much easier for grocery shopping, visiting with friends, eating out. It is a world held in suspension. I haven’t been able to smell the snow yet. I haven’t shoveled and I haven’t marveled at the sculptures snow and ice make. Life is easier but it’s loss is the toothy edge that Nature always brings. I hope this easy winter makes life lighter for the birds and squirrels and other wild things but I worry about the turtles and frogs coming up too soon believing it is spring and then losing them to the deep winter that may come still.
I haven’t had to fight in this winter, where I grow cold constantly, where I just want to sleep forever. Missing winter is like missing a great cold god. Sure, they’re mean, sure they try to kill you but hey, they’re mysterious and beautiful and as it happens, you aren’t starving and you can get through the experience of this god with relative ease as long as you drive safe on the roads.
This crownless god crawls in at night however. Every night, the temperature plummets to the teens and when I rise in the morning, everything is sheeted in the handiwork of the winter kingdom. The car’s windows are scrolled in feathers and diamonds and the grass snaps white in the bright sun. I gaze from without and gaze and gaze. Maybe there’s hope the god will come back. Maybe we’ll get to see the dazzling change we see every year and complain about. I want to complain about it. I need to complain about the cold and then have it take my breath away with it’s sharp hard beauty.
The sun is setting now in shades of orange and apricot, setting where I can’t see it, I only see the afterglow. One more day to go and then the weatherman says, the Artic cold will come in and all this warmth and dryness will pass away. So when that happens, I’ll head out with a shovel and salute the glorious day. Winter is coming after all. We get to see it at least for this year, I dearly hope.
