A Real Winter's Winter
Cold crisp air and snow, I am into you
This is the first winter in many that has actually felt, well, wintery. It’s cold. It’s snowy. There is ice to slip on. It’s inconvenient and bracing and people complain all about it.
I love it.
I offer this brief sampling of delightful things that only happen in proper winter-time conditions:
Realizing wild creatures can live on through so much more than seems reasonable. Like frogs that just go ahead and mostly freeze through a cold stretch, except the parts of them that are protected by self-produced antifreeze (glucose). Or tiny birds with tendon-y feet that don’t have much going on metabolically and therefore don’t mind cold temperatures, going about their business as if they don’t weigh just 1 ounce and it’s not 6 degrees Fahrenheit.
Seeing the paths everyone is walking in the snow. Winter animal tracks are much more obvious, and it’s easy to get lost imaging what caught the possum’s eye (or more likely, nose) that compelled it to veer right before circling back?
Tucking in at the same time everyone is also tucking in during a snowstorm. The collective-but-independent decision that everyone should stay in for the night takes the pressure off those of us already so inclined. It has suddenly become apparently unreasonable to do something else.
Finding all the bird nests that are so cleverly hidden most of the time turn into stark, white snow clump billboards in the sky.
Crunching through thin layers of ice. It’s better than popping bubble wrap.
I hope I never have to witness a snowless winter in the Upper Midwest, but it won’t be this year in any case.