Winter is heavy, hard and slow

What used to be an 8am departure for my morning walk with Chad and Manny, is now delayed at least ten minutes by putting on boots, finding a hat, a scarf, picking the right jacket for the conditions (sleet, snow, or just reeeeeeaaally cold), donning at least one pair of gloves, and finally, making sure all items of clothing are tucked inside each other to avoid any potential gaps through which the cold air can enter. The lightness of being is literally taken away, as you realize when you try to move in all of this gear and feel a bit like you’ve donned one of those Sumo wrestler suits you can put on at a carnival. The spontaneity of things goes away, as you can’t pop in and out of doors with the fluidity of warmer seasons’ constant temperature. There is no grabbing a pair of flip flops in winter and heading out the door. The physical heft of winter can make you feel the heaviness of daily life in ways that summer frees you from, allowing you to shake off things easily and let them be carried away by a warm breeze.

It isn’t really the cold itself that I mind, though that is a part of it, but it is the encumbrances of winter. The slogging that we do to get through and around the winter weather begins to wear us down much like slogging through the daily barrage of keeping up with bills, taxes, and all of the paperwork of life. The systems that allow us to exist with the splendid comforts of heat that magically comes on with a switch, drinkable water that flows into our houses, sewage that disappears down a pipe, and snow that moves off the street overnight, all, unfortunately require a lot of paperwork. While, perhaps, reducing the physical load on us, they often wear us down mentally as we try to understand who we are paying for what and why. All of these systems designed to make life easier sometimes just seem to complicate things and make me want to run away to the woods to a little cabin where no one will bothers me. I think – that’s where the magic lies – out in the country where the pine trees are dusted with snow and you can cross-country ski out your door (although I’ve done that here several times this winter). But, then, speaking of encumbrances, you’d have to plow your own street, dig out your car from the pile of snow it lives under in the driveway, rather than walk a few blocks to the nearest market, and you might lose power for more than a half an hour when there’s a storm.

The reality is that winter is just hard, no matter how you do it. But, some higher power has made it beautiful so that I still love it, despite what a pain it can be (literally, my knees have just healed from a massive wipe-out on the ice in front of our house two or three storms back). But, when the fresh snow falls and coats everything with a clean, sparkling layer of simplicity, it is irresistible. Snow takes all the hard lines in the man-made world and makes them softly curved, hiding many of the ugly things like black, cracked streets and sidewalks in the process. And, everything is one color; there is a human need for unending patterns in nature like the ocean, the sky, the desert, or a field of wheat, which can sooth a busy mind. Snow has that power as well, but in some ways is better because it is fleeting and can cover up so quickly what was once so complicated and make it smooth and plain.

Snow days are also great throw-backs in time. You can walk down the middle of the street and, when there’s a parking ban (which flashes on the top of the Time and Temperature Building in the middle of town, which usually just reiterates how cold the temperature is -as if everyone hadn’t noticed), there are no cars on the streets and they are wide and inviting. Schools are cancelled and offices shut down early, so the people that you see out in the snow are often in jolly moods. Jolly enough, usually, to help those who need it, like cars that need an extra push or people who need a hand shoveling a walk. There is a sense of community in a city forced to slow down its pace where people have time to notice their surroundings.

Then, there is the innocence of winter – not only the white simplicity, but also the fun. Anyone who watches kids sledding and rolling around in the snow like it was candy and doesn’t smile is a big scrooge. And there is plenty of grown-up fun to be had as well - skiing, sledding, snowball fights, snowshoeing – not to mention the joy of coming back inside after braving the elements and drinking something hot and eating large portions of belly-warming food. Sometimes it seems silly to go outside in the middle of a blizzard when you don’t have to (which I have been known to do) when, instead you could be inside, warm and dry, rather than getting frostbite, and you wonder, “why this unnecessary expenditure of energy?” Because it’s fun and people need to have fun. As Chad apparently said at age 5 or so to his mom when she cautioned him to be careful crossing the street, keep his coat on, and remember to say please - “Mom, can I have a little fun along the way?” Winter is a great reminder of the need by adults for fun. So, I’ve vowed to suck it up, put on all the layers, tuck them in tight, and get out in the snow as much as possible to take advantage of the fun parts of winter.

That’s all well and good when there is nice fresh snow and the world is bright and you can play in it. But, then comes the sullying of the snow. We had three dogs over one night and you can imagine what the crisp, white snow in the yard looked like the next day. While I understand the need to salt and sand the roads, it results in brown crumbly glop deposited all along the edges of the roads. Once the roads are plowed, the dirt continues to accumulate and get darker and muckier. And then, it melts, and you get ice and you fall (as I did) and you can’t do all the fun things that you could do before because the snow is now covered in a crust that cuts through your ankles when you ski and leaves you post-holing, temporarily suspended and then jolted down to the ground, with every step. Manny, with smaller feet than I, really suffers. Then, there’s the scraping. It brings me back to scraping old paint off of woodwork – the terrible sounds and the tiresomeness of it. In this case, the aim is to remove the casing of ice around your car (although, the other morning we were literally frozen into the house at the backdoor and had to go out the front door to open the back door from the outside). Sometimes it is easier just to turn the engine on and let the windshield heat up on its own, though this requires that you can open your car door to get into the car. This is not fun. Nor is removing the pile of snow that the plow deposited across the end of your driveway and that now weighs two tons because it is saturated, compacted, and frozen. And, once the fun is gone, the feeling of burden returns, and it is too much work with too little incentive to go outside to play.

I will conclude by saying that I am learning, or relearning the tricks, after five winters away – when you simply visit winter, but don’t live in it, it doesn’t count, because you can leave it behind and return home.

A few tricks-

- Get outside and much as possible and play. Reap the fun aspects of winter.
- Laugh at yourself (and maybe swear a little) when it feels like you’ve been beaten down one too many times.
- Make a lot of soup and invite people over to share it.
- Don’t whine – the people in northern Maine really have it bad.
- Make stuff – candles, beer, cheese. It doesn’t matter what, really.
- Write down the things that are swirling, blizzard-like in your head.
- Realize that it’s ok to go away to someplace warmer – it’s not a mark of failure.

Finally. Spring is coming. I have seen the first gullible sprouts poking up near melted snow (quoting my mom).

Your tricks? I’d love to hear them.