There was an entire aspect to my life that I had been blind to
— the small, good things that came in abundance.
~Mary Karr
Tag: Frost
As Different from Joy
There is an arid Pleasure
As different from Joy
As Frost is different from Dew
Like element—are they
~Emily Dickinson
Vapoury Air
Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun!
One mellow smile through the soft vapoury air,
Ere, o’er the frozen earth, the loud winds run,
Or snows are sifted o’er the meadows bare.
One smile on the brown hills and naked trees,
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air.
~William Cullen Bryant “A Sonnet –November”
Pale Spring
“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.
The Face of February
“Why, what’s the matter,
That you have such a February face,
So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?”
– William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
February never fails to be seductive, teasing of spring on a bright sunny day and the next day all hope is dashed by a frosty wind cutting through layers of clothing. There is a hint of green in the pastures but the deepening mud is sucking at our boots. The snowdrops and crocus are up and blooming, but the brown leaves from last summer still cling tenaciously to oak branches, appearing as if they will never ever let go to make room for a new leaf crop.
A February face is tear-streaked and weepy, winter weary and spring hungry. Thank goodness it is a short month or we’d never survive the glumminess of a month that can’t quite decide whether it is done with us or not.
So much ado.
So much nothing.
An Ancient Companion
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.
Melting the Frost of Adversity
Remember the goodness of God in the frost of adversity.
~Charles Spurgeon
Hard times leave us frozen solid,
completely immobilized
and too cold to touch,
yet there is hope and healing,
remembering the immensity and goodness of God.
Even when life’s chill leaves us aching,
longing for relief,
the coming thaw is real
because God is good.
Even when we’re flattened,
stepped on, broken into fragments —
the pieces left are the beginning
of who we will become,
made whole again
because God is good.
The frost lasts not forever.
The sun makes us glisten and glitter
as ice melts down to droplets.
We become the goodness of God,
His eyes and ears,
heart and soul,
hands and feet.
Even more so,
we are His tears.
BriarCroft at Year’s End
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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“The grim frost is at hand, when apples will fall thick, almost thunderous, on the hardened earth.”
– D. H. Lawrence
“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
“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
“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
The Mystery Bones of Landscape
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, artist
How endlessly beautiful is woodland in winter! Today there is a thin mist; just enough to make a background of tender blue mystery three hundred yards away, and to show any defect in the grouping of the near trees.
~ Gertrude Jekyll, British horticulturalist
There is a stumbling reluctance transitioning from a month of advent expectancy to three months of winter dormancy. Inevitably there is let-down: the watching and waiting is not over after all. There is profound loneliness knowing the story continues, hidden from view.
We have been stripped naked as the bare trees right now; our bones, like the trees of the landscape, raising up broken branches and healed fractures of previous winter windstorms. We no longer have anything to hide behind or among, our defects are plain to see, our whole story a mystery as yet untold but impossible to conceal.
Here I am, abundantly flawed with pocks and scars, yet renewed once again. There are hints of new growth to come when the frost abates and the sap thaws. I am prepared to wait an eternity if necessary, for the rest of the story.
It is Time
“Lord, it is time. The summer was very big. Lay thy shadow on the sundials, and on the meadows let the winds go loose. Command the last fruits that they shall be full; give them another two more southerly days, press them on to fulfillment and drive the last sweetness into the heavenly wine.”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
The wind is shifting, the sky filling with moody clouds, the temperatures dropping. The fruit still hanging is being naturally chilled. There is something about a near-frost that sweetens the flesh of the grapes, the apples, the pears and the corn cobs as if each is gathering up every sugar molecule for self-protection. We are the beneficiaries.
October is time for a hurried harvest before the hard freeze hits, leaving all in ruin, turned to mush. The window of time to accomplish the gathering and preserving has narrowed. No longer is the picking done leisurely with a temptation for it to be put off until tomorrow. Today is the day.
It is time. All is ripe.
Barnstorming 