It is the Challenge of Winter to Find Joy
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One of my favorite things about winter in Francestown is the moonlight. When I wake up in the middle of the night for a glass of water, I don’t need to turn on the lights to walk through my dark, yet winter-bright house to the kitchen. The moon reflecting off the snow is enough. I always take a minute to look out the windows at this time of the night, to the quiet field across the street at my sleeping garden, and then up to the cold winter sky. Is the moon always this bright? Have there always been this many stars?
This past December, I was missing all of that. December 2021 was dark. We had rain. There was no snow to reflect the moonlight and the dark world absorbed all the light without bouncing it back up. As a result, I had a lot of trouble motivating through the month of December. I listened to all the Christmas carols and went on a holiday shopping frenzy for vintage tinsel and plastic decorations from the Melamine Cup in Jaffrey to spruce up my house to help get in the spirit of the holiday, but I was grasping at air. If it looks like Christmas in here, I reasoned, it wouldn’t matter that it doesn’t look like Christmas out there. But it mattered. The Christmas pageant in Bennington was canceled because of Covid. My friends held their annual solstice hike up the High Five Trail in Deering, but I blew them off. I couldn’t feel it. It wasn’t cold enough. The moon didn’t sparkle down on the silent nights of a forested and snow-filled New Hampshire. I sat around in December sulking. When will Crotched Mountain open? When will the ponds freeze over? Where is winter?
Winter is a paradise, and winter is finally here.
We have snow now, so I’ve finally been able to ski. Our season was cut an entire month short, but now I’m making up for the lost time and getting over to the mountain nearly every day. To feel the rush of cold air against my cheeks puts me in touch with my core heat from feeling my thighs burn as I engage my legs to make turns. To feel my own warmth from within and to see my breath on the air–that is what’s exhilarating about winter. I didn’t realize how much skiing was synonymous with winter happiness for me. I need the cold. I need to be on the snowy mountaintops. I need the chill, the wind, the ice, the powder days, and first tracks in the corduroy snow.
We have frozen ponds now and I’ve finally been able to ice skate. To be in a wide open space, where the motion has stilled, the water a sheet of glass to glide over. The air, quiet so that the only sound comes from my skates scratching and my breath. These are the moments that put me back in touch with myself, and the world. To feel the warmth of the sun in a barren snowy landscape is to feel the base of life. Some friends invited me ice fishing for the first time this year. We had perfect conditions: sun and a windless day. We sat and talked and set the traps, and stuck our hands into the freezing lake water after the fish. The kids played on a frozen lake all afternoon, in the fresh air. We heated up some soup we had canned ourselves from our summer gardens.
The only way out is through. You have to get outside to appreciate winter and find joy through this season, or else sit inside and mope and wish for warmth. Instead of wishing, you can move and be active and find your warmth. Then you acclimate to the outdoors.
Even now, as I write, it is snowing. There are two little sparrows outside my window in the bare branches of the lilac bush, puffing out their feathers, defying this harsh winter air. Shouldn’t all activity stop when we are having weather? But if tiny birds with a bit of fluff are out there flying around, surely we can have fun out there in the storm too. Last year my family went for a walk in a snowstorm up to Shattuck Pond in Francestown. Outside with the snow falling all around us, internally warm from trudging uphill in our heavy winter boots, then stopping to catch our breath we could hear … nothing.… No, not quite nothing. It was quiet all around the white and desolate forest landscape, but we could hear something. We could hear the falling snow, a sort of static electricity. We could feel it too. At the end of the path we were brought to face a serene and open pond with evergreens on the shoreline blanketed white. It was well worth the adventure. To be out in the falling snow put us in the moment, utterly present in the now.
In the lilac bush itself there is a lesson in resilience: the purple buds tightly holding and protecting next spring’s leaves and flowers against the snow and cold. It’s the challenge of winter to find joy. We have to work sometimes to find happiness, and it’s in the little things, in small comforts: a warm drink, or watching the fire in a wood stove. When I wake up in the morning and there is frost on my windows, I know I am wearing wool base layers that day. We judge outside temperatures based on how extravagant the frost pictures are in the morning. There is a rawness to winter that is so necessary to connect with, a primitive force. To remind us that we are survivors, that we hail from hardy stock and ruggedness. These days, the quality of life is so easy that we need to force ourselves to go outside and connect with that weather and history , in small doses so that we don’t take comfort or the world for granted. But I don’t like winter to better appreciate the summer. I like winter because it is magical.
Look at the winter through the eyes of childhood. Eat snow. Hop on the sled and slide out of control to the sound of your own scared and belly aching laughter. Sit shotgun in a plow truck in the early morning hours. Unabashedly join into the harmonies of this season. Find the perfect icicle, then snap it off and suck on it. Walk in the woods and listen to the stillness. Then come home to a bowl of chili or pot pie. These are the times worth living for.
