Ice

I

Oh my heart has
returned to Sister Winter
~Sufjan Stevens

It was fourteen degrees on Wednesday morning. The air was so crisp and dry you could have cracked it with a hammer. I wanted to dance down the crunchy-snow-covered sidewalk on my way to the car, but having awakened disoriented and dizzy (I really can't get away with not sleeping anymore; I'm too far past seventeen), I took it easy on my inner ear and settled for a deep, contented sigh...that set me coughing.

Southern Michigan had an ice storm last weekend, and the drive to work, over the back roads and highways, had me staring arrested out the window so often that it was a good thing those roads are sparsely traveled. The trees glittered like glassworks. All the snow had melted on the ground, so the contrast between the brown-and-yellow stubbled fields and the ice-coated trees limning their edges and covering the low hills almost hurt -- like a good haiku.

Everyone but my parents and sister eyes me like he would a crazy woman for saying I love winter, but it's not a masochistic obsession. I dislike cold toes, wet socks, wind-snatched breath, and icy roads as much as the next person; but what I get from winter more than compensates for the inconveniences and the dangers.

I like that everything hibernates. I like the austerity, the beauty of starkness, the stillness that comes from the snow. It's a time that mandates rest. And it's one of the only times in the turn of the seasons when you can step out anywhere and be truly alone. No one's around, and when you're standing in the middle of a field, or a stand of trees, you're far more alone than you would be in any other season, because nothing around you is growing or dying; everything sleeps. The only active life you might see are a few birds, and their presence underscores the emptiness. It's just you.

So you can walk down the sidewalk, or through a field, or along the river, and soak in the quiet, absorb the stillness of everything around you -- the trees, the snow, the ice, the river. You can be by yourself, and in that solitude you can be yourself.

II

Oh my friends I
apologize

To everything there is a season. The Christmas season this time around was a hard one. Illness, loneliness, a yawning sense of purposelessness all robbed me of the childlike joy that usually takes over me like a sizzle of static. I did a lot of traveling, and I came back tired. The lack of wintery weather hurt me. I didn't feel that sense of magic, and when January wore on without a hint of snow -- with weather so warm you didn't even need a coat most days -- it bogged down my spirits. It wasn't seasonal. It wasn't right.

So I have been glad for the snow and ice. I may need to get up earlier in the morning to allow for time to put on boots and scrape the crystallized precipitation off my car and let the engine warm up so it doesn't stall out, but something about walking into that shock of cold brings me alive.

I love people. I love to be around them; but cyclically I need to be alone (there's a season for that, too), and winter is exactly that call to solitude that I've been missing. It's a time also to process a lot of the things I've refused to deal with from the past year. While life was busy and the landscape was lush I put everything away, like sweaters into a bin, and now that everything is silent I can dig them out and hold them up and look them over.

When spring comes, I'll be glad of that too, but this is the time for things to be still, and I like the stillness to have a blanket of snow. It's cold, and sharp, and beautiful.

And when the trees are stripped of their leaves, you can see them for what they are -- all of them throwing their branches up to the sky. If you pick out one, just one, while you're driving (or riding with someone in the car; that's probably safer) and watch it as you go past, it seems to spin, with its arms thrown up, like a dancer. In praise.