Notes on winter
Art by Lily Perkins
I do not ski. Did once when I was four.
I do not snowboard. Did a few times in my teens. I was . . . well, bad at it.
I do not snow shoe, though I’ve had a pair dusting in the attic for over 20 years, unused despite the original intent (a longer story to be told later).
Still, I love winter. Months of cold and twilight and odd mystical silence, spilling like ambient milk over the midnight land. The warm glow of hearth in the center of it. There is story there, there is song; a mystical mystery of sorts. And I hear it. I feel it. Always have.
Am I dipping into the profound a bit here? Romanticizing the aesthetic a bit? Probably. I also don’t care. There is something there about winter, something I can’t explain in words, though I try.
Few people I know understand this love of the season, especially when I’m not an active participant in those quintessential winter activities.
I don’t define my love of winter by how I use it, but how it speaks to me. Winter doesn’t care if you use it or not. If you do, excellent. I applaud and bow to you. If you don’t use it, fret not. It does not judge nor care.
What winter does care about is if you can hear it. What it’s saying; what it’s singing. Do you? Do you hear the notes? The words? The echoes? The whispers? The cries? The calls? It is soul song in season.
Winter’s song is distant, heard among those twilight skies and trees and odd-lit homes in the night of it all. It is orange lamp glowing in the windows, beaming out into that dark night.
And if you pause for a moment, and lean in, and hold breath for a second, you can hear the echoing distant song. Winter wants it to reach you, wants you to hear it.
And all it asks in return is that you nod when you do.