We Sing of Snow

Donald Hall, poet, editor of The Paris Review, and author of the children’s book, The Ox-Cart Man, wrote that “Winter is always again,” and also that, “We sing of snow to brag of pain.” I read his introduction to A Mind of Winter: Poems for a Snowy Season aloud to Nate the other morning and we chuckled at the truth of the line. It occurred to me that only the night before, when my classmates had compared the temperatures around these United States from a Zoom call, I piped up that it was -25 and we had a foot of snow outside. Last night, though a bit warmer at 9 degrees, I wrapped myself in one of our many wool blankets while we met again. My feet are always cold at the end of class, untucked as they are away from the piles of wool blankets Nate stacks every time he comes down from the loft and asks, “Are you warm enough?”

Yesterday I dropped off a pile of meals for a friend who is about to have a baby and we talked (as if to prove Hall’s point of bragging about the cold) of proper winter gear being the secret to making it through these cold January days and nights. She spoke about her lamb’s wool cardigan, stretching over the baby soon to come earthside, and I talked about Blundstones and Darn Tough socks and warm feet. (I’m saying an awful lot about my feet, I know, but every northerner knows to keep their feet warm and the rest will follow.)

Sometimes someone from the south will ask me, “How do you make it through the winter there?” and I guess I think to myself then, “If ‘making it through’ was how I saw it, I don’t think I would. I think I’d move again.”

The truth is I like the winter and I always have. I like the snow. I like the changing light and monochromatic landscapes. I recognize the privilege in being able to like it all, but I spent enough years here in near poverty, wearing thin cotton cardigans because I couldn’t afford wool, and argyle socks because I didn’t know that one pair of Smart Wool could carry me through a whole winter. Driving our Subaru on these snowy roads can’t compare one bit to the years I spent sliding off roads in my Honda Civic, loading down my backseat with sandbags and learning to pump the breaks. One learns to drive in the snow through trial and error. Or they can afford to buy a stable vehicle with good tires which will do half the work for them. If I’m honest, I think one of the reasons I moved south all those years ago was because I couldn’t afford the seasonal life and all the layers each one required in order to truly enjoy it and not just “make it through.”

But we can afford it now, as the snowshoes leaning against the porch wall and the kayaks in the garage and the Subaru in the drive and the sheer amount of wool everything in our house will attest. We stay warm, mostly. We stay cozy. Even when outside, we stay dry and know our limits.

I will never forget the time a friend and I were driving home from another state amidst a blizzard and my Honda broke down on the side of the highway, hours from home. We pulled every scrap of fabric out of our suitcases, piled them on, and hunkered down for a long, cold night. A state trooper stopped then and made us leave, leaving us in a McDonalds, and we slept all night on benches, waiting until help came in the morning. I don’t know if I would feel so grateful for these warm feet today if I hadn’t lived through experiences like that and more.

. . .

A few weeks ago, a friend shared that many art museums have virtual tours and since then I’ve visited the Louvre and the Met and Brandywine and a few more. I am determined that neither the season nor the pandemic are going to keep me from beauty like this from Camille Pissarro, titled Morning Sunlight on the Snow.

Camille Pissarro, Morning Sunlight on the Snow

I also somehow found this video blog from an artist in northern Sweden who documents cold swimming, short nights, and the winter sun of the great north.

Living with the Dark Winters in Sweden | Midnight sun & Polar night from Jonna Jinton

And then, because I was helpless against the algorithm, I found this snow art from Simon Beck and National Geographic.

Snow art from Simon Beck

One thing that always helps me in winter, both in the south and now back up north, is planting some paperwhite narcissus and some amaryllis. I know some people like to plant them so they bloom in time for Christmas, but I’ve always liked the idea of planting them on Solstice and watching them bloom through January. Our paperwhites have been open for a few weeks now and the amaryllis is still closed, but reaching higher and higher toward the sun every day.

Speaking of the sun—because in winter we are always speaking of the sun—I pay close attention to its movements, incrementally higher each day, casting shadows with a minute variation every morning, noon, and night. By mid summer it will be rising and setting in entirely different windows than it is right now and I love that change. And I love that it is always changing, no two days are alike.

The sun—because we are always talking about the sun—makes such a difference for me and my mental health in the winter, so I try to follow the light wherever it is in the house. If it is cloudy, and it often is, I light a candle or two and it helps. I feel good about doubling up my vitamin D every day and take my antidepressant each morning without shame.

“Winter is always again,” Hall wrote, and, as I wrote last week, “It will end and something else will begin. And then begin again. And again. And again.” And with every again, we learn a little more about how to live it well. Not that fabric, but this one. Not that meal, but this one. Not that shovel, but this one.

Something about beginning my fifth decade in this world has me thinking a lot about all the spaces I wish I’d done differently or better in my life. Conversations I wish I’d had and others I wish I hadn’t had. Interactions I wish had gone differently or environments I wish hadn’t taken me so long to leave. I feel like there is a soul inventory taking place in me these years. I don’t feel surprised by it, we have always known that midlife is a time of reevaluation. For some that reevaluation leads them to throw off the constraints of years past and others the reevaluation is simply recalibration, shifts by degrees, like the sun’s moving light.

Winter, in particular, has me thinking about what I’ve learned and what I wish I’d learned sooner. It also has me growing in grace for the girl I was and the woman I became and the people others were and became around me. We learn by experience, by embodied practices, by doing and undoing and doing again and again. We don’t know what we don’t know and sometimes, even if we do know, we don’t have the margin or the funds or the resources to do what we know we should do. And in those moments, I’m learning, what I want is grace and what I need is love, and what I want to give is both and a lot of them to everyone I meet.