I remember saying in 1999 I would never be a winter person. I couldn’t imagine willingly spending my free time or vacations in the cold or dark when the alternative was a golf course in the sunshine. It was absurd on it’s face and my snow-sport loving Canadian co-workers were all just a teeny tiny bit crazy. What makes me laugh is how certain I was at the time.
Twenty one years later and I wait for the dark, cold time of the year like many wait for the coming of spring. I wait for the people to go home and the little ducks to return. I wait for the time when I can be out an hour before sunrise, watching Venus rise in the star-filled sky. I wait to hear the owls hooting up and down the lake as they conclude their courtships and establish their territories.
I wait for those mornings, below freezing, when I can sit on the rocks and feel the Earth holding me without sinking into the mud. When the soft steam rises from the water and I can sit all bundled up in my wool and down in such a way that the grebes seem not to see me at all as they dive for fish in front of me. I wait for the kiss of frost on the leaves and rocks and soon the ice glimmering in the first light of day like the finest jewels left there just for me to enjoy.
I wait for this feeling - the feeling of belonging. At least for a moment on the stillest mornings as the pinks of winter fill the sky, I belong. I am one of the many creatures watching the sun rise, listening as the little birds begin foraging for seeds in the grass behind me, in their large winter flocks. I can feel the song of life within me even as I watch it through my camera lens.
It is not nostalgia - I didn’t spend my childhood sitting by a lake. This feeling of belonging is much deeper, a communion with every tree, rock and creature. A communion with all that has been, all that is and all that will be.
This is the time I wait for. This is what calls to me in the darkness with the sweetness of fine chocolate. This is the time when I am - home.
The wind chill here this morning is 12 below- and I read your piece just before I bundle up to go for a walk. It made me smile. I have always loved the cold weather more than the summer heat (and I do absolutely no snow sports! :) and I grew up where it was often 40 below. Even in the downtown streets of the city the pleasure is about the lack of crowds and. . . something else for me. . . . It reminds me of my own vulnerability as a small warm-blooded animal, and (happily) today's ability to survive conditions over which I have no direct control. The combination presses me up against the pleasure of being alive. Thank you for your beautiful writing.
A modern paeon extolling the beauty of Nature and its profound effect on who you are, both as a woman and an artist. Truly lovely. Growing up on a beach in North Florida, I loved winter, too. Unlike South Florida, where I live now, it could get quite nippy in winter. The tourists were largely gone, leaving the lonely, windswept beaches to a sparse number of bundled-up locals who walked, shelled, surf-cast or, like me, just sat on the dunes and drank in all the freedom and wonder of pounding surf, little scurrying sandpipers, soaring pelicans, and screeching sea gulls. We all respected each other's territory and need for silence and solitude minus the chatter and activity of the summer season. And like your little ducks and grebes, the avian "residents" never seemed to mind our presence. I miss those winter days by the shore when, like you, everything seemed to embrace me and say, "We know who you are. Welcome to our home."