Tag: cold

Awaiting the Whole Story

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moody1111

mistyfrontyard

I prefer winter and fall,
when you feel the bone structure of the landscape–
the loneliness of it,
the dead feeling of winter. 
Something waits beneath it,
the whole story doesn’t show.
~Andrew Wyeth

This time of year I am,
like the trees,
reduced to bare bones,
stark and vulnerable.
The cold wind of winter
buffets with bitter fingers.

Yet hope courses like sap
moving inside wooden veins,chilled and sluggish.
Waiting to waken, budding,
tips of naked limbs,
it hints at a story
yet to reach fruition.

sunrise1131

sunrise11114

Pale Spring

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photo by Chris Lovegren from our farm hilltop, Easter Sunrise 2012
photo by Chris Lovegren from our farm hilltop

“So fair, so cold; like a morning of pale spring still clinging to winter’s chill.”
~ J.R.R Tolkien

Clear and sunny skies on the second day of spring were full of deception today — no warmth emanates from a dimming sunlight stark with shocking briskness from a chill wind.

It’s all show without actually delivering the goods.  We have clawed our way out of winter, trying to shake off the frost and leave it far behind, seeking out encouraging sightings of buds and blooms and blossoms.

Maybe tomorrow morning, or perhaps the next.

Just maybe.

Or not.

twins
Twin Sisters from our farm hill, photo by Emily Gibson

 

An Ancient Companion

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The cold has the philosophical value of reminding men that the universe does not love us…cold is our ancient companion.   To return back indoors after exposure to the bitter, inimical, implacable cold is to experience gratitude for the shelters of civilization, for the islands of warmth that life creates.
~John Updike from “The Cold”

We’ve had a string of sub-freezing temperature nights and days with crystal clear skies once the frozen fog abates.  There has been no northeaster to send the windchill plummeting.  Everything shimmers with diamonds of frosty glitter all day long.  It is the kind of cold this pacific northwest native can actually enjoy.  It is not the cold of the midwest plains, or the Alaskan frontier.  This is civilized, “kill the bugs and the allergens” cold that helps balance out the ecosystem as well as our internal thermostats.  It is just not seemly to live at 70 degrees year round, toasted by the stove in the winter, soothed by conditioned air in the summer.

We are not always so lucky as this.  The cold that sometimes descends from the Arctic can blast through the strongest Carhartt clothing, sneak through drafty doors and windows, and freeze pipes not left dripping.  It leaves no one untouched and unbitten with universal freezer burn.

A bitter cold snap ensures even independent fair-weather individualists must become companionable when the going gets rugged, mandating shelter with others for survival.  It can even mean forced companionship with those we ordinarily avoid, with whom we have little in common, with whom we disagree and even quarrel, with whom sharing a hug or snuggling for warmth would be unimaginable.

Our nation is in such a cold snap today, terribly and bitterly divided.  If we all together don’t come in out of the deep freeze, we each will perish alone.   It is time to be thankful we have each other, such as we are.  At least we can generate heat, even if we can’t lighten up.

Solitude Melting

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photos of Dark Hedges, Ireland
photos of Dark Hedges, Ireland

The Cold

How exactly good it is
to know myself
in the solitude of winter,

my body containing its own
warmth, divided from all
by the cold; and to go

separate and sure
among the trees cleanly
divided, thinking of you

perfect too in your solitude,
your life withdrawn into
your own keeping

–to be clear, poised
in perfect self-suspension
toward you, as though frozen.

And having known fully the
goodness of that, it will be
good also to melt.
~Wendell Berry

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

Savoring Gray

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

I like these cold, gray winter days.  Days like these let you savor a bad mood.
–  Bill Watterson in Calvin and Hobbes

After four days of very cold crisp sunny days, it is raining tonight and predicted to rain for the next week.  We are back to gray and miserable, right where we were for most of December.

What a relief.

There has been too much perfection for too long:  four days of 360 degree views of snowy mountains and foothills that gleam in the sun, glistening crystalline fields of frost, sparkling clear waters in Puget Sound,  and bright blue cloudless skies is hard for any northwest native to tolerate.    It is hard work keeping up the smiles and general good humor that goes with excellent weather.   There is always a clear expectation that one must be outside enjoying the rare sunny day, when it is far more appealing to curl up with a good book and a warm dog by a roaring fire, pretending not to notice how nice it is out.

We native Washingtonians are congenitally grumpy people, born to splash through puddles and lose our boots in footwear-sucking mud.    We don’t carry umbrellas because they are useless when our horizontal rain comes from the side, not from the top.   We wear sunglasses on mid-winter sunny days because we can’t possibly get our eyes to adjust to so much brightness.   We wear hoods, sometimes even when we are indoors, just in case,  because you never know.

Gray is preferred.   Gray with wet and cold is even better.   No one even questions a bad mood on days like this.   A good mood would be highly suspect.

So I savor the opportunity to be disgruntled with such obvious justification as a rainy evening.

Downright crabby.  No apologies needed.  No excuses given.
It’s almost enough to put a smile on my face.

photo by Josh Scholten

photo by Josh Scholten

BriarCroft at Year’s End

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photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.
— J.R.R. Tolkien

photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

applefieldapplemossbranchesdec

“O cruel cloudless space,
And pale bare ground where the poor infant lies!
Why do we feel restored
As in a sacramental place?
Here Mystery is artifice
And here a vision of such peace is stored,
Healing flows from it through our eyes.”
~May Sarton from Nativity

treedecsunset

photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

decsuntree“I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember.

‘We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,’
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December.”
–   Oliver Herford, I Heard a Bird Sing

appleeat

photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

appletreesdec

weedseeddec

“Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!
Flash, like a Love-thought, thro’me, Death
And take a Life that wearies me.”
–   Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, Fragment 3

blackberrywinter

Dechaybarn

pyradec

“That’s no December sky!
Surely ’tis June
Holds now her state on high
Queen of the noon.

Only the tree-tops bare
Crowning the hill,
Clear-cut in perfect air,
Warn us that still

Winter, the aged chief,
Mighty in power,
Exiles the tender leaf,
Exiles the flower.”
–   Robert Fuller Murray (1863-1894), A December Day

photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

“This is what I have heard
at last the wind in December
lashing the old trees with rain
unseen rain racing along the tiles
under the moon
wind rising and falling
wind with many clouds
trees in the night wind.”
–  W. S. Merwin

photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

“The grim frost is at hand, when apples will fall thick, almost thunderous, on the hardened earth.”
–  D. H. Lawrence

photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

catpyrafrostygnome

photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

“Give me the end of the year an’ its fun
When most of the plannin’ an’ toilin’ is done;
Bring all the wanderers home to the nest,
Let me sit down with the ones I love best,
Hear the old voices still ringin’ with song,
See the old faces unblemished by wrong,
See the old table with all of its chairs
An’ I’ll put soul in my thanksgivin’ prayers.”
–   Edgar A. Guest

mushroomsclothespinfrostdectreehouse

“Through bare trees
I can see all the rickety lean-tos
and sheds, and the outhouse
with the half-moon on the door,
once modestly covered in
summer’s greenery.

Through bare trees
I can watch the hawk
perched on a distant branch,
black silhouetted wings
shaking feathers and snow,
and so can its prey.

Through bare trees
I can be winter’s innocence,
unashamed needfulness,
the thin and reaching limbs
of a beggar, longing to touch
but the hem of the sun.”
–  Lisa Lindsey, Bare Trees

creeperdecdecfrost1queenannedecfrostfir

“There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you …..  In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.”
–  Ruth Stout

decsun

photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

harrow

snowberrywintergnomes

photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson

BriarCroft in Autumn photos

BriarCroft in Winter photos

BriarCroft in Spring photos

BriarCroft in Summer photos