Winter, At Long Last

There has been little snow this winter, little in fact to call a winter this season. There have been moments of snow and pockets of chilling cold but nothing resembling anything I have come to know (and sometimes fear) as winter.  Gone it seems are those days when you froze just stepping outside, when one season would seem like a long series of dark nights and mornings which helped foster cravings for hot chocolates, soups, fires and the warmth of another human body to ease the cold and loneliness that attached itself to the season. Winter it seemed somedays was dead or dying, ironic in that this is a season most often associated with death and dying (my own maternal grandparents died in separate January's which lends the notion a personal gravitas).

The mild season this year has been in some ways a blessing. Running outside has been far more pleasant and manageable, I also no longer have the cursory fall back excuse of too cold, too icy or too snowy to run in my arsenal. Going out for a morning or late evening walk has also not been as seasonly arduous, minimal layering of clothing only required for the exercise. The heating bills have been lower which is economically nice and I haven't had to clean the car often or shovel the driveway in the morning or night more than a few times.

Still, I began to miss winter. Perhaps this has something to do with being someone who is born in the winter, being a February baby. Most of it though is nostalgia. As I've gotten older I've come to appreciate the season of winter on a deeper more personal and spiritual level. The cold give us character, it defines us and our ability to withstand the pressures of climate. Winter is a season of gathering and solitude at once. In the winter we gather with friends, we seek others for their warmth even if only to commiserate together on the lousy bitter weather. The darkness of the season, the bareness of our natural surroundings, the absence of light sparks all work together to spark in us a solitude and inward trained thoughtstream. Those moments of quiet, frozen reflection are crucial in our growth for without those meditations we may never find the courage or will to ask ourselves the toughest of questions that only a cold hard season can muster from our bones.

Most of all though, I missed the snow. The beautiful silence of snow, the blanketing of the Earth under my feet and in front of my eyes with the softness and whiteness of snow. I missed the feel of snow under my feet, the impressions my footprints left, testaments to my wanderings. I missed the muffled quiet that a heavy snow brings, and the sense that when everything is covered in the snow the world seems bigger, grander, prettier than you imagined. If the bitter cold of winter lends itself to sadder aspects of lonely solitude, then the snow I feel lends itself to a more peaceful zen inspired solitude where you individually feel part of a greater bigger confluence of times and spaces. Visually snow makes it seem like everything is gone and covered, nary a body on the sidewalk, but it is in the stillness it brings with it that you feel connected to a wholeness.

Tonight it snowed and for the first time in awhile, it snowed like a memory, like a painting, like an impression. It seemed like something I used to know and when I went for a walk it felt like something I still knew. For old time sake I stuck my tongue out and caught some snowflakes and made long lost love to a season I sometimes feel I am losing. I felt that there was no better way to begin the last week of my twenties then with a Trudeaesque walk in the snow and having gone out and returned, I know again the colour of gorgeous, I know again the feeling of beauty, it has always been for me a snowy night in Toronto.