The winter landscape is stark. In November this is a good thing. It makes it easy to glimpse the silver plush of a squirrel or the soft beige of a deer against the black tree trunks and the white snow but February is a still month and not much is stirring. I go for walks and never see a cardinal or a robin which makes me sad because it’s when the robins sing from the bushes that you really know that spring is just around the corner. The squirrels must be hibernating or just resting, exhausted from gathering nuts and hiding nuts and digging up nuts. It makes me tired too. And the deer are high up on the mountain. No bear, no fox, no coyote to grab the eye and alleviate the unrelenting gray and white and black.
I love the winter. I love this time when much is asleep but now the berries are gone and the grasses are buried under three feet of snow which has become dingy with rock salt and dirt and car exhaust fumes, and yet it is too early to sense the thrumming of life under the snow, as if you can hear the tender blades of grass pushing up from the earth. The ground is still frozen.
I remind myself that it changes almost overnight but today I just want to curl up in a ball under the covers until the bird song (and yes, it really is joyous when it comes) wakes me up.
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2 thoughts on “WINTER (of my discontent)”
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When it snowed on Monday, we were amazed at how quiet it was. No cars, no trains. It was blissful. I haven’t seen any squirrels round here either. The lid I’ve put out with peanut butter is untouched.
I saw one of those gigantic pileated red and black woodpeckers today and I could hear a mouse rustling under the snow but that was all.