Sometime around last Thanksgiving, human Northern snowbirds headed south to avoid the upcoming winter onslaught of gray days, frigid temperatures, cold rain, and snow. I count my older sister and brother in that number. Winters in Ohio and Michigan prompted both to buy second places of residence in Florida years ago to escape the inevitable seasonal ‘slop’ up here.
For me, though, winter is different. I must say, I rather like it.
Maybe that’s because I became a teacher and a good snow storm got me a day off work. More than that, though, I think it’s the being holed up inside the house for the season that appeals to me as an introvert. There’s nothing much better in our quiet winter home than to pull up a chair to a wide window as the snow flies, watching birds beyond, while the wood-burning stove warms our space.
That doesn’t mean winter leaves Cindy Lou and me unscathed. Months of long gray days get to us after a while. Two years ago we invested in a timeshare for the expressed purpose of escaping overcast February/March for a week’s respite on warm sand. As mentioned here before, watching Cindy Lou brown under a late winter sun -- and observing her sense of self ‘flower’ -- is valuable family stuff.
Overall though, in my humble opinion, it is our personal investment in winter that makes Ohio springs so sweet.
Come around the middle of March we’ll get a sunny, less-chilled day that informs some ancient sense deep inside our brain that winter’s grip is being loosened. We remember the warm cycle of the Earth Mother and know the cold will change soon. On a warm, late winter day one can even visualize tomato plants expanding inside their cages, flowers everywhere, promising sweet, juicy fruit in just a few more months. Winter does encourage dreaming.
It is around my birthday, just at the cusp of spring, that I get antsy to reinstall the canopy over the back porch and reset my open air ‘summer room.’ I got that done right on time this year. And while sitting out one afternoon after a warm rain, I noticed the perennial bleeding hearts pushing out from under wet, matted down leaf duff beginning their spring statement of life.
And that’s when it hit me -- again -- how important weathering a bleak winter is for a full, spiritual appreciation of the promise of spring and the abundance of life on this lucky planet.
As green shoots erupt in every flower bed and the grass comes back to life, I feel my spirit lift. While winter is good for what it offers, harbinger crocus, daffodil, and hyacinth are cause for a celebration that emanates from a well, deep within.
For those of us who have weathered this past snowy Northern winter, such an appreciation of the colors of Life is an entitlement worthy of our emergence from the gray.
Today’s elder idea:
A light exists in spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period --
When March is scarcely here
A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels.
Emily Dickinson
excerpt from Johnson #812
image: Cleveland pear flower detail. Newly planted at Wild Grace last weekend.
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