Some reflections on the season

Winter is a time of year.....or a calendar event.....or a frame of
mind. Its arrival, at least here, is unpredictable and sometimes
unrecognizable. Basking in the glow of a warm fire and looking out
the window into a starless and silent night, there is no doubt that it
is here, after several false starts. The juncos on the deck, below
the feeder where all the rest gather and gorge in anticipation of yet
another near zero night, are a harbinger, a positive indicator, but
not quite rising to the level of confirmation. Six inches of slush,
turning to solid ice overnight, the current snowfall, the titmice, the
date, the positions of the stars and the sun and the moon, the look
and the feel and the smell of the walnut and chestnut bark, the
quality of light, the contents of the refrigerator, the libations, the
moods in the house, the almost sibilant hootings of the courting
barred and great horned owls, the hoary heads of the goldenrods and
the compass plants and the phragmites, the ice skinned pond, the
hickory leaves skittering over the crusty snow, and the obscenely fat
squirrels hopping over the surface, carefully avoiding the pitfalls
left by their much larger neighbors, the coyotes, martens, rabbits,
deer and feral dogs.....all these attest to the certainty that the
still time has once again arrived. The time of deep quiet interlaced
with the howling winds and bone freezing cold. The time of
deprivation and starvation. The time of desert conditions in the land
of superfluous water. It's here again.....without fail.....in spite
of the fecund absurdity and hollow promises of the recently departed
July.

Spring is the time of subdued beauty, the time of the shy and demur
trout lily and the spring beauty, enlivened by the impetuous boldness
of the golden marsh-marigold and, eventually, the unseemly bravado of
the forsythia and the magnolia which quickly fade and give rise to the
full-throated roar of summer. Summer is the time of riotous beauty,
the time of Bacchus and excess. Its arrival is imminent and
unmistakable when the black locust, in May, sends out a profuse blush
of white blossoms, often rising to considerable heights above the
neighboring trees, enticing the honey bees and other pollinators to
sample their offerings and get serious about the business of preparing
for yet another season of filling the larders for the hard times that
will inevitably follow. Autumn is the time of garish display, when
all the efforts of the recent plenty pay off in an orgy of color and
fruit and in seemingly inexhaustible bounty. But everyone fattens up
quickly.....and soon the surplus is gone. And then it's winter again.

No one gives it much thought.....at first. Everyone and everything is
fat and warm and lazy and content. The first snowfall and the first
skin of ice are greeted with delight and anticipation. Roots are full
of sugar and root cellars (or their modern equivalents) are full of
the harvest of plenty. Little thought is spared for the lean and mean
times ahead. Right now, in a house in the woods, we are well fed and
the business of plowing the 3/4 mile long driveway yesterday, to
remove half a foot or so of heavy but otherwise inoffensive slush, is
little more than an already fading pleasant memory in a life filled
with innocuous adventures. The big freeze last night, following hard
on its heels, can't be taken as seriously as it obviously should be,
despite a noon-time walk filled with slipping and ineffectual kicks at
rock-hard blocks of former snow that somehow managed to tumble back
down into the drive during the night and which now defy the hardest
and heaviest boots, requiring shovels or even more serious implements
to dislodge and relocate atop the now semi-permanent curbs lining the
drive.

But there's an edginess to the delight in the frosty and pellucidly
clear air. The clouds of exhaled breath indicate more than just the
speed and direction of the momentarily all but undetectable breeze.
They also presage the invisible but all too palpable savagery to
come.....soon. You stand on the porch, listening to the sounds of the
trucks passing on the freeway, two and a half miles through the woods
and the fields to the north, you look up at the strange cloud
formations, half lit by the half moon, and suddenly you realize that
it's here again, the time of the bone freezing cold.....the time of
the eternal search for admittedly excessive but nevertheless eternally
inadequate adjectives.

giles