Snow and snow again

Snow and snow and snow.

Snow covering the swing set. Snow covering the deck furniture. Snow covering the mailbox, with only the door flap peeking out like a little face under a hat. Snow nearly up to the highest rail of the fence.

Some winters, I find myself unintentionally keeping track of the inches of snowfall, like Henry David Thoreau, who wrote that he was “self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms.” A mental inventory builds in my mind: The storm just after Christmas. The storm in the middle of January. The storm on Valentine’s Day.

This year, even I can’t keep track. There was the Saturday storm, and then the one the forecasters promised would break records, and then the one that began during the Super Bowl. But after that, I lost count. I think there was one late last week, and I know it snowed all day this past Monday.

It feels to me as if there’s a message for us in the ceaseless snowfall. With each storm comes another standstill. No school. No work. No driving. As of this most recent one, no public transportation. Maybe the Universe thinks we need urgent instructions in how to stop rushing around.

If so, I’ve taken the message to heart and slowed the pace down in many ways recently. When school is cancelled, I let the kids sleep late. I make an extra pot of coffee and work from home if possible, writing at the kitchen table while watching the snow pile up on the deck; on days that the driving is manageable and I’m expected in the office, I disregard my usual business attire in favor of snow boots and heavy sweaters. I still go running, but not my usual distances; just to the end of the street and back to log a mile or two before finishing my workout indoors on the stationary bike.

Of course, I have the luxury of being able to do this. Every snow day, my thoughts eventually turn to those parents who risk losing their jobs when school is cancelled and they have to scramble for childcare, as well as people without the basic comforts of heat and shelter during a snowstorm. It’s easy to relish the winter weather when you have the option of hiding from it. Even the small amount of shoveling I attend to feels more like a welcome workout than an onerous task.

When I teach personal narrative, I usually have the class write about a memory in which a weather event played a major part in the story. People write about hurricanes, lightning storms, ice storms. I’m not sure this winter’s storms have much of a narrative arc. They’re just there, an ever-present part of the background.

If the lesson was to slow down, I’ve definitely passed with flying colors. I’m going to miss this winter weather once it’s gone and we’re back to a regular schedule of five school days a week, five round-trip commutes into work every week, evening meetings that take place as scheduled rather than yielding to last-minute cancellations.

Winter has put me under a bit of a spell, and I know I need to get back up to speed eventually. But one or two more storms before that happens wouldn’t be all that unwelcome. We can rush around the rest of the year. Midwinter is a chance to cocoon. Or at least that’s what I choose to believe the Universe is telling me.

Snow and ice and a polar vortex: keeping up the streak

So far, 2014 has been a challenging year for maintaining a running streak.

 A storm on the second day of January brought over a foot of snow, making the footpath on which I normally run unusable since the town’s budget doesn’t cover clearing the footpaths. This left me with the option of running multiple random laps up and down our long common driveway, from one house to the next to the next and out to the road, sort of a starfish shape, each complete tracing of the starfish earning me about three-quarters of a mile. Which meant I needed to trace the course at least twice even to earn the minimum one-mile requirement that keeps a streak runner on the USRSA registry. And since one mile isn’t really much of a workout, if I want any of the other benefits of running aside from remaining qualified as a streak runner, I needed to do a little more than that. Three or four laps along the branches of the common driveway gets very, very tedious in very little time.

But before the snow had any chance of melting, the polar vortex descended. I had never run in sub-zero temperatures before, but I did last week. Not for very long at a time, though. On the handful of days that it was under ten degrees, I put on as many layers as I could wear while still remaining upright and did just a mile. I found that by wearing tights, pants, a t-shirt, a heavy sweatshirt, and then a lined hoodie belonging to my husband, with sleeves that ran a good four inches past my fingertips and a hem that ended almost at my knees, I was plenty warm enough, at least when the wind wasn’t blowing directly into my face. But all the apparel gave me the shape and mobility of the Abominable Snowman. A mile was all I could manage before the sheer weight of all the clothing exhausted me.

Finally at the end of last week, the sun shone and the chill abated a little bit. It was warmer by only a few degrees, but that was enough to start the melting process.

Which, of course, meant ice.

So I put on my YakTrax, which give me decent traction in the snow but, like the layers and layers of warm clothing, also adds a certain ponderousness to the run. Yak Trax aren’t heavy or clumsy, but just cumbersome enough to make the run tiresome.

And then on Friday I tired of the Yak Trax and convinced myself that the layer of powdery new snow would provide enough traction that the ice wouldn’t be a problem. I enjoyed a pleasant run that day. It wasn’t too cold and the powder did feel nice on my unfettered feet. Until the last ten yards or so of the route, when I hit an ice patch that was invisible under the new snow and fell flat on my back.

My first thought was typical of a streak runner: I was within a snowball’s throw of the two-mile finishing point, so I’d definitely cleared my necessary daily mile and the run still counted. My second thought was that nothing hurt too badly.

But it’s hard to fall flat on your back on the ice and not hurt at all. Soon I realized how sore my tailbone was, and I’d wrenched an arm while trying to catch myself as well.

So it was a tough week for running. But on Saturday, the temperature was well into the thirties by the time I was dressing for my run, and the ice was gone from the roadway. I ran a warm, comfortable, safe, easy ten miles, savoring every step all the more for all the weather-related travails of the preceding days.

“Doesn’t a mile on the treadmill still count toward the streak?” a friend asked on one of the coldest days last week.

Well, yes. According to the rules of the United States Running Streak Association, running on a treadmill is just fine. But I consider being outdoors for at least ten minutes part of the challenge along with completing the mile, I told her. I like having a streak of not only running every day but spending at least a small interval of time outside very day. No matter what the weather. In snow. On ice. During a polar vortex.

Still, this week is better. The air is milder; much of the snow has melted. We’re not even halfway through January; more winter weather will probably occur before the season ends. But days like the ones we had last week remind streakers that it’s almost always possible to get that mile in, one way or another. It gave me a chance to become ever more creative at dressing for the cold weather, and it reminded me of the value of Yak Trax.

The streak continues, and my tailbone has mostly recovered from the fall on the ice. I’ll be grateful for milder temperatures this week. Wind chill isn’t a particularly good feeling, and neither is a bruised tailbone. But persistence feels good, and I’m glad to have made it into another week of streak running.

Perfect timing: Heat and vacation

It seems so improbable, the timing of this week’s heat wave. The coincidence of weather and school scheduling just felt almost too perfect.

But there it was, as if orchestrated by a film director. Since June, the weather has been mild and pleasant, mostly dry, occasionally rainy, but never hot. Perfect weather for wrapping up the school year, I commented several times throughout the past three weeks: cool weather kept the kids as focused as they could be during the final days of the term, and made it easier for me to persist not only through work deadlines but through the kind of housekeeping tasks I wanted to accomplish before the kids were out of school.

That’s how it stayed right through Tuesday, their last day of the term. Then on Wednesday, the first day without school, temperatures in the 90s bloomed, and stayed the next day and into today. Ever since school vacation began, it’s been hot. Not just sunny and warm but heat-wave hot.

Which, as I say, seems almost improbably perfect. On Wednesday, Tim went to the beach with friends on a long-planned trip; they couldn’t have had a better day for it. I took Holly and her friend Samantha swimming at the pond where we have a summer membership, our first visit of the year. In the evening, we worked at our town’s Strawberry Festival. The air stayed hot well past sunset, and the same the following day.

Normally, temperatures in the 90s can be hard to take, especially day after day, and especially because New England heat tends to bring humidity along with it. We wilt; we feel unmotivated; we get cranky.

But not these past few days. Now it just seems so fitting: it’s the start of vacation, and everyone is enjoying the heat. Holly and I sat in the shade on the library lawn reading despite the pervasive warmth yesterday afternoon; Tim went to a friend’s pool and then played evening baseball. Last night, on the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, the temperatures were still in the 80s as the light seeped out of the sky at nine o’clock.

Eventually we’ll tire of the heat, if it stays much longer. Tim will start to drag on the baseball field; I’ll have trouble finding motivation for my daily run. We might even get a little cranky. But at this point, it’s a perfect start to summer. I’m not sure whether to explain the timing as a theological or meteorological phenomenon. But for now, we’ll keep basking in it. School is over for the year, and if you venture just a step or two beyond the crisply air-conditioned house, there’s no question that it’s summer.

To Do....or not To Do

I woke up yesterday morning already facing defeat with my To Do list.

I just knew I wouldn’t get through it. I never get through it. And if there was ever a weekend when my odds were good of navigating my entire To Do list, this weekend was it. We had almost nothing on the calendar other than bringing Tim to a school dance on Friday evening and picking him up afterwards, a children’s theater event on Saturday afternoon, and church on Sunday morning. So if you start the clock at 5 p.m. on Friday – the time that I consider the work week over and the time that both kids are home from their afternoon activities – and run it until 10 p.m. on Sunday – the time I try to get to bed – and then subtract eight hours each on Friday night and Saturday night for sleeping, that leaves about 37 hours to fill however we chose.

But by Sunday morning, I knew I wouldn’t get through my list, and as I lay in bed thinking about getting up, I found myself unwittingly cataloging those items most likely to get bumped. I knew I’d get through the basics: running, church, cooking meals, washing dishes, probably a load or two of laundry. But I knew I wouldn’t get to any of the lower-priority tasks, like putting away the props from the play that ended its run two weeks ago, cleaning up Holly’s room (which in terms of the frustration it causes me should be top-priority, but because of the amount of work it constitutes always gets bumped down a notch), and searching through the boxes that we still haven’t unpacked since moving here last spring for the nighttable lamps that I really wish we could start using again.

So I got out of bed and focused on the beginning-of-day items I wanted to get through: writing in my journal, eating breakfast, putting bacon in the oven for when the kids woke up (they sleep late on weekends, which is truly one of the many joys of reaching the tween years). But even as I drove to church, I was still thinking about all that I wanted to get done but probably wouldn’t find time for.

And then at some point I had a change of heart. What if I just catalogued those things that did get done, instead of those that didn’t? What if instead of rebuking myself for never getting those last few boxes unpacked, even eleven months after our move, I celebrated the fact that I was out for a four-mile run before church? What if making the bed mattered more than not getting the laundry done?

Just thinking this way put a more positive spin on the day. And when I got home from church, the sun was shining and the temperature had already reached the low sixties. Holly wanted to go for a bike ride, Tim wanted to play badminton, and my friends Jane and Donna were coming by for a walk at 2:00.

So I mentally threw away the To Do list and just enjoyed the sunshine. Truth be told, by the time dinnertime rolled around, I’d accomplished even less than I expected. I hadn’t even made it to the supermarket, having rationalized that if we had milk, orange juice, and lunch-makings for Monday, it could wait another 24 hours.

And yet I’d gone running, biking, walking and played badminton, as well as collaborated with Tim to set up a ladder and pluck three errant badminton shuttlecocks out of the roof gutter. It was a late-winter day that felt like summer, and I’d spent more than half of it outside. Yes, the laundry went unwashed, the groceries unpurchased, and the nighttable lamps left in their storage boxes for yet another week.

But I’d stopped thinking about it. For the rest of the day, I counted what I did do rather than what I didn’t. And that made me feel as if I’d accomplished plenty.

Snowless winter

It’s been a warm, snowless winter.

And in some ways, that’s not so bad. Last winter was the snowiest winter I could remember, the snowiest winter in fifty years, the snowiest winter on record – I don’t remember how it was defined, but parents of school-aged kids came up with their own term for it: a winter so snowy that even the kids stopped thinking snow days were fun.

Snowbanks that looked more like walls than piles lined the roadway. Plow drivers complained that there was so place left to put the snow.

Not this winter. After one bizarre and unseasonable storm two nights before Halloween, we’ve had just a dusting here, a dusting there. Traces of white on the tree branches now and then, but no sledding, no snowmen. All fall, as I walked along the trails of the state park behind our new house, I thought “These trails will be great for showshoeing,” but my snowshoes remain in the exact same place where I put them when the movers unloaded them last April.

Thre’s a lot less inconvenience to a warm snow-less winter. No scraping sound of the plow driving by before dawn. No clearing snow and ice from the windshield after work. No pestering the kids to shovel a path for the dog, who refuses to go to the bathroom in drifts as high as her stomach.

And we’re certainly saving money on the plowing, or lack thereof.

But I could use a snowy day right about now. Sure, we all romanticize the school cancellations of our childhoods. We all reminisce about long days passed in snowball fights interrupted only for servings to hot chocolate or a fresh batch of cookies from the oven. And we all grow up to learn about a different kind of snow day: the kind when you absolutely have to get to work for a ten o’clock meeting or drive 45 minutes down the icy, blizzarded-in highway for a long-scheduled doctor’s appointment just as the no-school text message arrives from the superintendent’s office.

Yes, we all at some point in adulthood experience a moment of snowstorm-induced stress, after which we wonder what happened to those wonderful stormy days remembered in rosy shades from our youth.

But having no snow has taken us too far to the other extreme. I’m tired of mud. I want to wake to the strange grayish light of snow covering the skylights over the bed. I want to hear the kids cheer when I tell them there’s no school today. I wouldn’t even mind hearing them plead for bacon and waffles, a special breakfast for a special day. (Last year, there were so many “special day” breakfasts on snowdays that I began to worry about my son’s cholesterol level.)

Instead, I woke today to bare ground, bare branches, bare sky. Last winter at this time there were four feet of snow on the ground. We took pictures of the rail fence with the snow reaching the highest rail, of the wooden swing with snow up to its seat, of the kids diving into snowdrifts taller than them, and we dreamed of summer.

This year there’s nothing to wish away, no need to dream of warmer days. And there’s a sense of something remiss in that. Perhaps we need the snowbanks to remind us of beaches, the snowdays to remind us of summer vacation. Without duress, there can be no welcome rush of relief. And as the mushy, mild days roll on, I wonder if we’ll notice when spring arrives.

Unseasonably warm

It seems that people generally fall into two camps regarding the unseasonably warm weather with which December of 2011 has begun. Some, like my friend Jenn, are saying “The holiday season just isn’t the same without frosty air and snowflakes. Where’s the weather to set the mood? When can we say it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas?” Others are just happy to be catching what feels like a little reprieve before true winter kicks in.

In past years, December has been a cold and snowy month, though last year’s epic snow accumulation didn’t begin in earnest until the day after Christmas. Nonetheless, this week’s temperatures in the sixties seem to mean something to everyone, whether positive or negative.

I’m a little reticent to admit it, but at the moment, I fall into the reprieve camp. I say “reticent” because relishing the unseasonably warm weather makes me feel, well, old. There was a time when I found snowstorms romantic; frigid mornings inspiring; icy ponds and frost-crusted branches magical. But that time was decades ago, when the driveway seemed to magically plow itself and the ultimate crowning touch to a snowy day was a school cancellation the next morning.

There are still plenty of things I like about winter weather. Snowshoeing, for one thing; and I’m looking forward to snowshoeing even more this winter because of all the trails near our new house. I like the surprise of getting to sleep a little bit late because school is closed and the kids don’t have to catch the bus. I like watching Tim and Holly go sledding together. I like the way the fields and woods throughout our town look when blanketed with snow.

And perhaps it’s only because I’m so sure all of that will still come within the next few months – or maybe weeks – that it’s easy for me to say I’m enjoying this unseasonably mild weather. But the fact is, temperatures in the 60’s or even 40’s, with the ground still dry, simply make life easier than deep snow and crusty ice. Last night was our annual town tree lighting. For the past several years, the weather has been uniformly freezing for that event: adults stamp their feet and dab at their runny noses while kids run in circles to stay warm while we sing carols and wait for Santa’s arrival by firetruck. True, it’s a little harder to be in the Santa mood when you can stand outside during the tree lighting in a sweater rather than a parka, but it still seemed like an easier evening overall this year than it has recently.

The weather is expected to change in the next day or two, and maybe then I’ll finally get some Christmas shopping and decorating done. Snow and cold are definitely a catalyst to getting into the holiday mood, as I learned when we had a foot of snow in late October and Holly started talking about her Christmas wish list even though it wasn’t yet Halloween. “It feels like Christmas!” she said on that October 30, and it did. Now it feels like September. But September is a beautiful month, and I’m going to breathe deeply of the mild damp air and enjoy it just a little more before I have to dig boots and gloves out of the basement for another long winter.

Power down

As I write this on Sunday evening, we’ve been without power for fourteen hours. This is very rare for us; I can’t remember a time since my childhood that we went for more than about six or eight hours without power, and even those events have happened only two or three times in the past decade, as far as I can recall. But this time, with a heavy wet snowfall on Saturday night pulling down power lines all over the state, we are facing the kind of situation we usually hear about but avoid: already a full day and evening, and potentially several more to come, without electricity.

And I have to admit, I’m finding it hard to think of anything to say about it that isn’t a cliché. Everything positive about power outages has already been said by the many who experience them more often than we do, and yet now that it’s our turn, I’m finding them all to be true: the way it’s made us focus on the simpler things in life – reading by candlelight, savoring a grilled cheese sandwich made over a gas burner – the fact that it has imposed upon us a mandatory hiatus from our Internet connections, with the constant chatter of email and Facebook; the strange reality that all four of us are sitting together on the couch in front of the fireplace reading or writing, rather than dispersed into four different parts of the house, engaged in four different activities. Even the dog seems to want nothing more than to sit in front of the fire, gazing into the flames.

Because this kind of crisis happens to us so rarely, I’m admittedly a little lax when it comes to the fundamentals of emergency preparedness. But this storm has taught me that what I’ve done in that realm is apparently good enough, at least for the first fourteen hours of a power outage. The half-dozen bottles of water stored in a cupboard have been enough so far for drinking and washing up. We had batteries for all the flashlights, and all the flashlights were easy to find in their usual places. We have candles and matches. Because it’s still autumn and because it’s our first year of living in a home with a fireplace, we hadn’t stored firewood yet, but the logs we sawed this morning from tree limbs that fell into our driveway during the storm ignited fairly easily and have kept us warm. It’s reassuring to know that even without scurrying around preparing for a storm, we’re pretty well equipped to manage one, although I should also admit that not until this evening have I understood why people fill bathtubs and washing machines, and I’ll remember to do that in the future.

Waking this morning to the not unexpected realization that we were without power, my first thoughts were of the many duties I would not have to do today; a rush of welcome laziness swept over me, and I slept an hour later than I usually allow myself. I also keep thinking how relieved I am that this situation is the result of a weather system and not, say, a terrorist attack or an earthquake, something with far more profound implications than a simple snowstorm. Sunday was one of the most peaceful days I’ve had in months, maybe even in years. Rick and I cleared limbs and sawed logs together all morning; the kids, absent their usual temptations of TV and video games, shoveled snow together and then put my iPod on speaker and danced.

Later, we went to my parents’ house and played card games. In the late afternoon, my mother and Tim and I took a walk up to the soccer fields and around the cemetery. Back home, the four of us warmed ourselves around the fire.

It will get more challenging as the days pass, if the power isn’t soon restored. I won’t feel so peaceful or tranquil if I’m unable to meet my work responsibilities due to our Internet connection being down. (Even as I write this blog entry, it’s with the awareness I’ll have to find a hot spot to post it if we’re still lacking electricity in the morning.) But for now, all is dark and quiet. Tim remarked on the visibility of stars in the sky with no house lights around to detract from their glow. Like a 19th-century family, we all went to bed early, when the cold and dark simply made it unappealing to be up any later.

It’s all been said before. But this time, I had the chance to find out for myself what it was like. And for now, it’s a very serene moment in time for us.

Rainy August day

Rain poured down for much of the day yesterday and throughout the evening, but I didn't mind a bit. I did feel bad for people who were taking the week as vacation, camping or hiking or biking or at the beach; and I'm sorry for kids at camp this week as well. But for me, the rain felt just fine.

For one thing, it meant one less thing on my To Do list: no worry about watering my outdoor flowering plants and herbs yesterday or today or probably for several days to come. It made for a soggy run, but one thing that being a daily runner has taught me is that the rain, like a lot of sometimes-undesirable entities, often sounds worse than it is. What seems like a downpour thumping against the roof and windows and trees often feels more like a steady sprinkle once I'm out in it, as long as I remember to wear a hat with a visor. And, as I always say, after the first five minutes you're as wet as you're going to get, and then after that it doesn't really matter anymore if it's raining.

Besides, rain almost seemed to complement the activities we had planned for the day. It was Holly's first day of a weeklong daycamp program, but unlike all the kids off at soccer camp or Girl Scout camp, rain was no deterrent to her group's activities: it's a creative writing camp. For most of it they sat in a pillowed reading nook to write, but at one point they sat under a canopy outdoors and wrote about the sounds and smells of the rain falling all around them.

Like Holly, I spent the morning writing – though I was actually reporting on a sculpture symposium taking place in a nearby town this week, not crafting metaphors and similes about the weather as Holly was – and then together she and I took the dog to the vet for a vaccination and then did some errands. Hopping in and out of the car and crossing the parking lot, first at the post office and then at the library and then on to the supermarket, we were windblown and drenched, but neither of us complained. Knowing how much Rick was hoping I'd pick up some Diet Coke for him, I even made a special stop just for that. By that point, it was an extension of the lesson I always apply to running: I was too soaked for it to really matter if I made yet another stop. Home in the late afternoon, I changed clothes and spent the next two hours cooking: my sister and her family, along with my mother, were coming over for dinner, and rather than a burden, it seemed like fun to prepare food and set the table.

I wish we could send some of this rain to Texas and other drought-stricken regions. I know my nattering about not minding getting wet while doing errands is meaningless compared to the suffering that rain – or lack of rain – causes so me people. But I also like to stop and acknowledge the rightness of the weather, when it so perfectly matches my mood as it did yesterday. There's still time for more hot, sunny weather before the summer ends, and more outdoor recreation as well. For now, I'm happy with rain.

Warm summer rain

There’s always something new for me to appreciate about running. I’ve been running regularly for the past 25 years and daily for the past four years, but days like yesterday still come along when I find myself out on a run thinking, “I’ve never noticed how much I like _________ .”

In yesterday’s case, filling in the blank was “…running in a light steady rain on a warm, humid summer day.” In fact, I can’t remember a single previous time when I’ve found it really pleasing to run in the rain. Sometimes I do so grudgingly, sometimes acceptingly, sometimes miserably – I often quote Runner’s World executive editor Amby Burfoot, who in one of his books says “There is no bad weather for running. Okay, maybe 34 degrees and raining is bad weather for running.” And it seems that throughout the winter, I frequently find myself running in 34 degrees and rain. Sometimes, too, I run in the rain fearfully, as I did two weeks ago, with thunderstorms rolling in from a distance.

But until yesterday, I had no memories of not just abiding the rain but really loving the rain. Yesterday, the rain felt nourishing, cooling, soothing. The air was so warm and humid; the rain, only slightly cooler, seemed to balance out the heat. I ran four miles, a straight out-and-back down to the end of the main street off of which we live and back. When my face started to feel hot and sweaty, I ran my hands against the leaves that poked their way into the roadway and cooled off in the water; normally I try to avoid wet leaves. Normally I try to avoid puddles, too, but yesterday there was a puddle extending the width of our driveway that I simply couldn’t avoid, so with my feet wet from the outset, there was no reason to try to avoid further puddles, and I enjoyed the mindlessness of just running straight through the puddles rather than trying to navigate around them.

I have to admit that my newfound enjoyment of the rain wasn’t solely a change of mindset, not just a Zen-like decision to welcome the rain rather than resist it. Part of the change was pragmatic: until last summer, when the importance of sun protection finally sunk in, I was never in the habit of running with a hat on. Having the rainwater run off my visor rather than into my eyes made it a lot easier not to mind the steady stream of droplets.

But mostly, it was just that rain felt right, yesterday. The weather has been hot lately, and I’ve been running early in the day, when there are a lot of insects out. In the rain, the insects were gone. I felt as if I were blissfully undisturbed: just me, running through the gentlest of showers, cooling off, damp with fresh clean water rather than damp with sticky sweat.

By the end of my four miles, my clothes were drenched, but I still wasn’t cold. It was a perfect day to be running in the rain, and I felt as if I’d discovered a whole new pleasure in running. It might be a long time before the conditions – air temperature, intensity of rainfall, even my own mindset – conflate into the perfect rainy-day run again. But for yesterday, it was exactly right, and I felt as if I’d made a discovery. About myself, about the weather, about running.

The brightness of a gray January day

What a luxury it was to be at home by myself yesterday, writing, catching up on deskwork, looking out at the steel gray sky.

I was away for all of last weekend; it was natural that when I returned from my two-day trip, the kids and I wanted to spend as much time together as we could. Monday was a holiday; we spent the day playing games, organizing the house, sledding, baking.

On Tuesday, an early morning snowfall, combined with a forecast for rain and sleet later in the day plus the fact that it was scheduled already to be an early-release day for the kids, resulted in a snow day. And I have to admit I was a little surprised by my reaction when the automated voicemail came in on my cell phone at 6:15 a.m. announcing the school cancellation. Somehow we’ve passed those earlier parenting days when unexpectedly having the kids home from school caused me to worry about all the work I’d fall behind on; yesterday upon realizing they’d be home all day I acknowledged a little twinge of delight, because snow days are fun these days: we play, we sled, and I manage to get my work done.

Toward mid-afternoon, the power went out for several hours. After dinner at our local pizza parlor, we layered on sweaters and sweatshirts, gathered candles and all played Uno together in the warmest part of the house, then cheered when the lights went back on.

Still, it was a joy to have the tide turn yet again yesterday morning, as the house emptied out, with Rick off to work and both kids safely packed onto the bus. I sat in an empty house for the first time in five days, happy to have hours spread out ahead of me for focusing on writing, desk work, replying to an accumulation of email correspondence, and sketching out some plans for work yet to come.

Yesterday had neither the awesome beauty of the previous day’s snowstorm, with its fast-falling curtain of feathery snowflakes, nor the brilliant blue-skied splendor of the chilly but sunny day preceding the storm. Yesterday was quintessential January, with a dull gray sky and temperatures just a shade above freezing resulting in a scrim of sleety drizzle falling all day, making the snow crusty rather than feathery and the tree trunks wet and brown instead of white.

I felt nothing else so much as grateful for the quiet that pervaded the house, for the heat that coursed out of the vents at regular intervals warming the air around me, for the bright lights of the kitchen shining down on my keyboard, for the clean running water as I washed the dishes. Snow days, Monday holidays, even power outages all have a romantic aspect. Anything out of the norm that lets us break the usual routine and spend extra leisure time together does. But there are days when nothing beats normalcy, and yesterday was one of those days. I was very happy to be at home writing about winter while winter coursed on just outside my well-sealed windows. In another couple of months, this weather will seem dreary – the crusty grayish snow, the soggy melting, the colorless sky – but right now it just says January, with its quiet meditative mystique. And yesterday, I welcomed it all.

Snow day!

It’s a snowy day. It’s a Snow Day! Forecasters have been predicting a big storm for the past several days; by late yesterday afternoon their claims were dire enough that the townwide notification system went into effect regarding a school cancellation.

My kids knew when they sat down to dinner last night that there’d be no school today, which to me somewhat changes the flavor of a snow day, as my predominant memory of these same events when I was their age was sitting with bated breath by the radio at 7 a.m. waiting to hear if our town would be named. And my parents always reminded us we had to do our homework the night before, even with a forecast like this one, just in case. Townwide electronic notification wasn’t an option then. So knowing at 6 p.m. the night before takes away some of the key elements of a snow day, in my opinion.

On the other hand, Tim went off to a sleepover at a friend’s house, which he couldn’t have done had we not been certain about the school cancellation; and Holly and I stayed up past her bedtime watching a movie.

When the kids were really little, being snowed in was nothing I looked forward to. I felt plenty resourceful as far as finding things to do with the kids at any time of year and in any weather, but really little kids don’t have much fun outside when it’s snowing hard. And then for the few years that I was working full-time in an office setting, snow days were something to be dreaded: I’d still be expected to put in a full day in the office, childcare arrangements be damned. Staying home with the kids meant pulling the “mom card” and admitting that parenting responsibilities beyond your control were keeping you from work, something to be avoided at all costs in the corporate sector.

But these days, it’s fun – as much fun as I remember snow days being when I was a kid. Holly is lucky enough to have a close friend next door who’s always willing to slog through the yard to our house and play with Holly on a snow day. Tim has the job of shoveling my parents’ front walk, which he usually does with relatively good cheer. We play games. We watch movies. We hang out. We try our hand at making bagels (which never really works out very well, but once a year or so we roll up our sleeves and give it a try anyway) and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (absolutely foolproof). If I have work on deadline, I know the kids are self-reliant enough that I can fit it in. And although they’re still not fond of going outside when it’s snowing heavily, once the precipitation tapers off, I know I’ll be able to get them out for a trip or two down the hill on their sleds. Maybe I’ll even go snowshoeing this afternoon.

One of the picture books I remember best from my childhood was The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. I had it in conventional hardcover form; Holly had the board book version when she was a preschooler. I’ve always loved that book, about a boy named Peter who plays all day in the snow. My favorite part comes at the end, when Peter wakes up the next day and is delighted to see that still more snow has fallen.

I’m not necessarily hoping for another snow day – or another foot of snow – tomorrow, but I like the genuine childlike elation behind the way the book ends. Snow and more snow – perfect! It’s exactly how I felt at that age. Then that feeling ended with parental and professional responsibilities. But now it’s back. Snowstorm? I’m ready. It’s January, and that’s what winter is for.

The season's first snow

For the past few years, we’ve had snow in early December. This year the snow is later to arrive – enough so that I’m actually hearing people lament its absence, and not just people under the age of 12. Even adults are eager to see some snow, it seems.

Myself, I’m on the fence. I love seasonal weather whatever the season. I like sunny warm days in May, blazing heat waves in July, dank humidity in August (really, I do!), crisp cool air in October, and blizzards in January. And I like picturesque snowfalls during the holiday season. But this year, the delay in snow hasn’t bothered me at all. In fact, I’ve found the cold dry weather of this month strangely satisfying: the chilly frozen edge of winter without the mess of snow and ice and slush.

My children say the opposite: “If it’s going to be cold, we might as well have the fun of some snow!” Tim grumbles. And intellectually I understand his argument, but somehow I’ve found something very manageable this year about the cold air without snow. No snowplows or skidding to worry about on the road; no clumps of slushy grit tracked into the house. No endless searches for the kids’ boots and hats and waterproof mittens every time they go outside: gloves are still necessary on these chilly days, but their sneakers handle the dry frozen ground just fine.

Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of excitement as the lightest of flurries began to sift down from the sky mid-afternoon yesterday. Just a handful of flakes, then still air again, then another handful of flakes an hour later. “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t,” the sky seemed to be saying, until dusk, when the snow began to fall more steadily.

It’s still just a moderate dusting and not a real snowstorm, and in a way, this might be the best kind of winter weather of all. A light snowfall cascading over barren fields and dry roadway: all the beauty of the fresh white flakes without the trouble of real snowdrifts and accumulation. It’s a fine way to start the season, as the Winter Solstice dawns. A fresh white covering of snow, but no talk of school cancellations. The winter is just beginning; no doubt we’ll have plenty of weather to contend with in the weeks ahead. Even those winters that supposedly set records for high temperatures and lack of precipitation have one or two good blizzards and a couple of snowdays, or at the very least delayed starts to school.

We’ll be searching for ice scrapers and parkas soon enough. For now, it’s wonderful to walk outside and feel the feathery touch of new snow, falling ever so lightly for the first time this season.

Changes in the weather

When I stepped outside just before heading up to bed last night, I noticed a smell I hadn’t smelled in a long time. It wasn’t completely foreign to me, but it wasn’t anything that had been in the air recently, and I can’t exactly describe it, except that it comes sometimes with rain: sort of a metallic scent that reminds me a little bit of dirty hair. We’d had light rain on and off all day, but this isn’t the way rain always smells, or even often. Just occasionally. Like last night.

I don’t know where the smell came from – some particular combination of the air and the groundsoil and the precipitation, or maybe even something as specific as a mushroom that was blooming due to the moisture – but what struck me was how the environment immediately around us has changed so often in the past few weeks. Every day feels like a different biosystem, or micro-biosystem anyway. One day last week the air was as humid as it normally is during a tropical storm. Another day was one of the windiest I’ve known; my mother and I went for a walk in the afternoon and picked up debris from falling branches on the driveway the whole way out to the road and then picked up more debris on the way back that had fallen since we’d last passed by. Other nights in the past few weeks have smelled like quintessential New England fall, the air crisp and dry, with a scent of pine and maple.

Smelling the unusual metallic/dirty hair/rain smell last night reminded me of how many changes we witness outdoors at this time of year. In the winter, when the ground is frozen, changes in the atmosphere are almost imperceptible: one frozen night and day seem indistinguishable from the next. And in the summer, when the heat and humidity hover, the weather can seem to change very little for days on end as well. But this fall has been like a kaleidoscope of climate: the temperature, humidity, ground cover -- from dry leaves to wet leaves to acorns -- and yes, even the smell of the air, have changed daily.

I’m grateful I can be outside experiencing it for so much of the day. Yesterday I walked to school with Holly in the morning, then set off from there on a two-mile run; later in the day I walked next door to my parents’ house, and earlier in the day I had been out to the barnyard to let the sheep out to graze. When I was working in a corporate environment full-time, one of the hardest parts of it for me was how often I would be indoors from 8:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. or later. It just seemed like such a waste of the world not to get out into it at all. Sometimes during lunch I’d walk around a residential neighborhood near my office, an uninspiring neighborhood with busy streets and a jumble of houses that had little character but at least gave me a chance to be outside.

This is a time of year when our surroundings change fast: the grass begins to die off, the leaves change colors and fall from the trees, acorns encrust the ground, pine needles turn to mulch. There’s a lot to see, and I try to spend a lot of time outdoors witnessing it. It’s autumn in New England, and I don’t want to miss a thing.

Basking in the heat

We’re on the fourth or fifth day of a record-breaking heat wave in the Northeast, and making my way sluggishly through it reminds me of how much I love hot weather. Really hot weather.

Actually, what I love is not so much really hot weather as really seasonal weather, or extremes of any kind when they fall at the times they should. I like frigid temperatures in January and blizzards in February; muddy messy thaws in March; cold dry winds in November. And, of course, picture-perfect sunny blue skies with warm sunshine in June and a crisp breeze in October.

I especially like hot weather at night. I like the feeling of going outside long after the sun has set and feeling air on my skin that’s warmer than a typical indoor temperature. It makes me think I could walk all night and feel safe and comfortable.

But I also have to admit that earlier this summer, during our first hot spell, it occurred to me that a good part of my self-perception as someone who loves hot weather dates back to the time that I worked in an air-conditioned office building most of the day. During those years, the years that I came to think of myself as a big fan of heat waves, my exposure to the 90-plus degree temperatures was often limited to a quick optional foray outdoors during lunchtime and a walk after dinner.

Hot weather is just one of many things that takes on a different flavor when you are home caring for children, as I am these days during school vacation. It seems to me that in the past, being home on a very hot day meant sitting in the shade reading and sucking on ice cubes. Now it means getting everything done that I normally do – from writing articles on deadline to running loads of laundry – while trying not to let the climbing humidity make me unnecessarily irritable with the kids.

Yesterday, though, we broke down and turned on the air conditioning. My husband and I generally take a bit of Puritan pride in how little we turn on the A/C. I don’t think we used it at all last summer, and the summer before I remember we turned it on just once, and that was because we were hosting a large party at our house. We’re smug about the fact that we don’t pamper ourselves with A/C; we just bask in the warm humid air.

Not this week, though, with temperatures reaching record-breaking three-figure numbers. And I have to say, the hot weather is a lot easier to enjoy when you have the option of escaping from it. Getting a good night’s sleep helps everyone’s disposition, too, and that’s a lot easier with the air conditioning on. So this week we’re relishing the heat in small doses: early-morning running, afternoons swimming in the pond, the shade of a fading day during Tim’s early evening baseball games.

And late at night I stand out on our front step just to breathe in the dense, damp, hay-scented hot summer air, taking comfort once again in the sense that I could walk for hours on a night like this.

Unseasonable weather: A visit from summer

Generally, I like seasonable weather. It doesn’t matter the season; I just like weather that reflects the essence of the date on the calendar. I like heat waves in July, cool sunny days with bright blue skies in September, a chilly gray day with darkness falling early in November, a big snowstorm in January, a raw dampness in March, a soft warmth in the air in May.

But sometimes un-seasonable weather can be fun too. This week, for example, we’ve been having a taste of summer. It’s way too early to think this will last, but ever since Saturday we’ve been enjoying temperatures in the 70’s and unwavering sunshine. Yesterday the mercury rose into the mid-80’s, and it felt like the middle of July, not the beginning of April. Holly rode her bike after school. I went running in shorts and a T-shirt; Belle ran with me and waded into a stream to cool off as soon as I let her off the leash.

Unseasonable weather is like a visit from a friend you don’t see much. When it arrives, you immediately start remembering everything you like so much about it. On a day like yesterday, I remembered how great it is to go outside without piling on layers, and how pleasant it is to see the cows and sheep out grazing in the middle of the pasture rather than hovering next to the barn munching on dry hay. But it happens at other times of year too. An unseasonably chilly day in August makes me start thinking about all the benefits of back-to-school time even with school still a month away. A snowstorm in early December reminds me of how picturesque our setting is when the snow drifts high along the fences.

And being reminded of the upcoming season has practical benefits too. Temperatures in the 80’s yesterday inspired me to look over my summer wardrobe and think about what was worth keeping. A snowstorm in November gets everyone to the hardware store to buy shovels. Even a cold autumnal air front in the summer reminds me to buy the kids’ school supplies.

But also like a visiting guest, the unseasonable weather reminds us quickly not only of what we like about the season it hearkens to but also what we might not like so much about it. I never remember over the winter or early spring how much less energy I have in the hot weather; yesterday I was reminded generously, when I started feeling sluggish by late afternoon, the time I normally gear up to make dinner and start non-work related household tasks. Insects have started whirling in through the screens, too.

According to the forecast, our summer preview ends today and we’ll be back to early spring weather. We’ll miss summer, and we’ll look forward to seeing her again in another couple of months. In the meantime, we’ll get back to the cool windy days typical of April.

Last month during the flooding, when we had to park on the cul-de-sac behind us and walk through the woods to get to the cars because the driveway washed out, Tim commented, “it’s actually kind of fun going through the woods instead of the usual way,” and my father responded to him that any time things are different from the norm, it’s kind of fun. For kids I think this is particularly true. These days, something as trivial as an hour-long dentist appointment during the time of day that I normally write is enough to make me irritable, but I still remember how excited I was during a particularly massive blizzard in my childhood when we lost electricity for three days. Now when we lose electricity even for three hours, I get a little bit frustrated by the inconvenience, even though I know how intransigent that is of me, but back then, just living without lights on was a thrill.

And for Tim, walking through the woods to get to the car last month was a novelty. He’s right: exceptions to the regular routine are exciting. We had fun visiting with summer this week. It was great to get our bikes out and wear t-shirts and shorts. Soon enough the high heat of summer will return, only more in season. And we’ll be all the more ready for it, thanks to this week’s preview.

The cows are by the pond -- is that a sign of spring?

Throughout most of the winter, the cows stay close to the hay barn. Although they have free range over several acres of pastures and woods, they tend to huddle in the cold weather, moving little from the spot where I set their haybales every morning.

This doesn't seem surprising to me. I always assumed it was because they conserve energy and retain heat by staying put, and because they are not particularly comfortable slogging through snow drifts, not to mention the fact that when the fields are frozen or snow-covered, there’s nothing for them to graze on, so why bother to move away from the spot where they are fed, even once they’ve finished eating for the day?

So I was a little bit thrilled to look out the window yesterday afternoon and see that all six of them had crossed over two pastures to mill around by the pond, where they often graze in the summer. It made me think that although the temperatures rose no higher than the mid-30’s and wet snow fell for much of the morning, the cows might be detecting a tinge of spring.

I myself certainly wasn’t. When I went out running midmorning, I was wearing as many layers over my head, neck and torso as I do in January. But I was encouraged to think maybe the cows sensed something I didn’t. It is early March, after all. Spring should be on the way, at least fairly soon. Tim announced a few days ago that he’d seen Canada geese in the sky, which he considers the first sign of spring.

Still, if I woke from a six-month sleep today and didn’t have a calendar, I’m not sure I would have been able to identify this as early March. So I’m curious to know if the cows really were reacting to something in the air, or in their bovine limbic systems, or in their memories. Because not only is it reassuring to think that spring hovers somewhere close ahead, but it’s also appealing to imagine that animals feel changes in the seasons even if we don’t.

I’m a little ashamed of how out of touch with the weather I can be. It’s true that running a mile or more every single day puts me in closer and more constant proximity to the weather than I ever used to be. As I’ve written about before, the fact that I'm outside for at least those ten minutes every day means I always have some idea about how cold or warm it is and whether any precipitation is falling.

But at the same time, I check my computer every morning to see what the temperature is, and sometimes before I go out to feed the cows I check on the digital thermometer connected to our household heating system. Even though we have a traditional mercury thermometer on the porch, I somehow feel more assured if I see the numeric version on my computer screen or on the thermostat, which I realize makes no sense at all, especially as at that point I am seconds from going out into the weather myself.

Environmentalist Bill McKibben wrote in The Age of Missing Information about the peculiar and disturbing fact that in the 20th century, Americans developed the ability to turn on the Weather Channel and check the forecast anywhere in the world but have lost the ability to hold a finger in the air and determine which direction the wind is blowing from, not to mention determine from that information what kind of weather is likely on the way. Similarly, I consult the table in the newspaper every day to see what time sunrise and sunset is, having lost the ability my ancestors presumably had to keep track of the solar cycles by, well, looking at the sky.

So I’m left to wonder if the cows detect spring in the air – maybe even temperatures in the 40’s by this weekend? – or whether they were just tired of standing by the barn and chose to alleviate their cabin fever by taking a ramble over to the pond. And I feel sheepish, no pun intended, about the fact that I check my computer screen for the temperature and the newspaper for the forecast before I go outside, rather than feeling the breeze and smelling the air and watching the sky to obtain information. It all makes me wonder what else the cows might know that I don’t.

Or if maybe they don’t have any special animal sense at all of when spring is coming, but just saw a break in the precipitation and used it to go for a stroll to the pond, rather than worrying about when the next forecasted snowfall would begin.

The best of running, the worst of running

This past week, to borrow an opening from Tale of Two Cities, it was the best of running, it was the worst of running.

My sense of elocution tells me that a more correct way to phrase that would be “It was the best of runs, it was the worst of runs,” but I can’t get away from a distasteful image behind the phrase “worst of runs” (not to mention “best of runs”!), and besides, it reminds me of my 7-year-old’s expression for her new favorite breakfast of a soft-boiled egg: “Mommy, can you make me an egg with a runny nose?”

Last Saturday, I ran five miles, and it was the best kind of running. With temperatures in the high 30’s, the air was cool and raw. There was no precipitation but enough moisture in the atmosphere to feel like a salve on my lungs as I breathed in and out. Layers of fleece kept me plenty warm enough, and a varied playlist of podcasts from NPR, the New Yorker, and the New York Times Book Review kept me mentally occupied for a solid 50 minutes. Traffic wasn’t a problem on a weekend morning as I ran through the Town Center, out toward Concord, across Russell and School Streets toward home. Friends drove by, and I ran past the houses of more friends. It was running at its best, and so satisfying to be covering some decent distance after several weeks of really short running distances.

Midweek this week was, conversely, the worst kind of running. I’ve often quoted Amby Burfoot’s comment that “There is no bad weather for running. Well, if there is any bad weather for running, maybe it is 34 degrees and raining.” The past three days have been high 30’s and raining, and it’s been dreary. Deep slushy puddles populate our long dirt driveway, and my feet get soaked within minutes of leaving the house. I spend the run dreaming of soaking my bare feet in a very hot bath. The dog, who likes running but doesn’t like rain, stops to shake herself hard every ten seconds or so, forcing me to dodge her to avoid stumbling. Mud splashes up over my ankles and I’m just glad to get fifteen minutes or so done, to clock just a little more than my daily minimum mile, and be done for the day, returning with soaking wet hat, jacket, gloves and shoes.

But daily runners know all about the best and worst of running. If we didn’t commit to running every single day, we could avoid the worsts. We could stay in on days like yesterday (or the day before, or the day before that). We could exercise via treadmill. With 930 days of consecutive outdoor daily running under my belt as of today, though, I can only say that being out in that kind of weather is part of the experience.

When my son Tim was a daily runner along with me, we often commented on how miserable weather is just something you make yourself get through, and the opposite, the kind of day I had last Saturday when I did my five-miler, is the reward for getting yourself out in the sleet and slush on the bad days. Though the metaphor may not be subtle, it was a useful lesson for Tim when he was 9 and 10 years old and it continues to be a useful reminder to me at four times that age. Some days are better than others. Some days the air feels pure and fresh in your lungs and you glide along for nearly an hour just happy to be out enjoying the scenery; other days you slog for fifteen minutes and feel grateful as soon as it’s over. But you never regret having gone out, no matter what the weather. And no matter how trivial the pursuit of daily running, you still always reap the rewards of knowing you succeeded at the simple goal of getting out for a mile that day.

When the weather is dreary, I spend a lot of the run thinking about how glad I’ll be to get home. Running every day despite the weather reinforces my innate gratitude for a warm house to which I can return when the run is over. Knowing I choose to be out in the cold rain and can take a hot shower when I’m done makes me think about the earthquake survivors in Haiti who will be living unprotected on the streets as the heavy rains come later this spring, and of course I don’t need to reach that far geographically to find people to sympathize with; there are men and women just 20 miles away on the streets of Cambridge and Boston who don’t have the luxury of retreating into a warm house when the 15 minutes of outdoor exposure are over.

So I’ll be grateful for both: the joyful five-mile gliding run on a cool clear late-winter morning, and the miserable one-mile out-and-back in the sleet and mud. No matter how obvious the metaphor, it’s always good to be reminded of the contrasts life holds, and how the most important lessons to take from the cold and miserable days are that better days lie both behind you and ahead of you, and that as long as shelter and a hot shower await, there’s really no reason not to push yourself out into the cold.

A range of winter weather patterns

I’m not sure whether it’s a coincidence or an intentional curricular scheme, but both of my kids’ grades are looking at the weather this month. Tim’s fifth grade class is studying weather patterns from a scientific perspective; Holly and the other second graders have an assignment to record the temperature each day and write their observations.

It seems to me like the perfect time of year to be studying weather. This week we’ve had a wide variety, and each change brings with it welcome effects. Over the weekend, the temperatures hovered right around freezing and there was a great deal of ice on the ground. Holly went sledding and deemed the conditions perfect; from inside the house, I baked bread and enjoyed feeling cozy in the chill of winter. Then on Monday we had a January thaw and heavy rain, which melted the ice that had been causing me so much anxiety on my daily run and washed away a lot of the snow that was blocking the footpaths. Yesterday I felt so grateful to be running on muddy gravel instead of ice, and the balmy air made me think of spring: not really all that close at hand right now, but somewhere in the not-so-distance future. The rainfall meant I didn’t have to fill the tub that the cows drink from when the stream freezes over, and the snow washing away allowed us to open the gates between pastures and let them roam freely, which they love; it’s always fun to see them venture out onto the hillside after staying near the barn for several days.

Today is cold again, with a prediction that much chillier air is on its way, but the sun is shining and the ground is dry. I like the hard frozen conditions of late January; now the ice is gone but the mud has frozen into smooth hard terrain, and the bright sunlight shining through the treeless branches is starkly beautiful. This morning when I went out to feed the cows, I heard birds chirping, and despite the 25-degree air, the sound of the birds conveyed a hint of spring mornings.

My spouse sometimes says he’d be happy living in a warm climate yearround – he likes swimming, barbecues and baseball and has no use for wintertime -- but I love the change of seasons. I love the dreary seasonality of a sloppy winter day and the elusive relief of a January thaw, a short reprieve from the cold. I like heavy snowfalls and dry sunny days like today. I like walking in thick powder or atop a crust of old frozen snow.

Committing to a daily run two and a half years ago put me in closer touch with the weather than I had previously been. In years past, I was guilty of driving from garage to garage in the winter, sometimes not spending any more time outside than it took to cross the parking lot at the supermarket . I used to take the winter off from running, which did have the benefit of generating a craving to run by springtime. But now that I am committed to ten minutes or more of running every single day, I don’t have the option of ignoring the weather. I know when it’s wet or cold or icy or dry or snowing. And sometimes winter running is really challenging. But where modern life and its conveniences make it so easy these days to ignore the weather altogether, I’m glad most days to put myself out into it, comfortable or not.

Through sleet or snow for my daily mile

One of the best things about making a commitment to run every day is the close connection it’s required me to forge with the natural world.

And one of the worst things about making a commitment to run every day is the close connection it’s required me to forge with the natural world.

What’s good about it is that I never find myself oblivious to the weather the way I once did. Especially for people who work in offices full-time and commute by car, it’s so easy to go from home to car to office and eight hours later do the whole thing in reverse without spending any time outdoors. For people like me who live in houses with attached garages or work in buildings with garages, it can be even more extreme. Living in the city and walking to work or to the subway, as I did when I was in my twenties, I often complained about the freezing cold or rainy or slippery conditions, but at least I couldn’t overlook them. When I returned to full-time office work in May of 2006 after four years at home with children, I remember the first few days on the job I would leave the building at 5 PM and want to cry for the fact that I hadn’t drawn a breath of fresh air or felt a ray of natural light on my face in more than eight hours. And when I lost my full-time job, one of the very first things I felt cheerful about regarding my unwanted change of circumstamces was the opportunity to be part of the outdoors again throughout my regular day.

Still, even when the opportunities present themselves, it’s easy these days to avoid the natural world when the weather is less than ideal. We can still drive the kids to the bus stop, spend the day in the house, even exercise on the stationary bike or treadmill or at the gym and avoid exposure to the natural world when it gets really hot, or really cold, or rainy.

When I joined the United States Running Streak Association two years ago and made a commitment to run every day, I promised myself that even though the official USRSA guidelines allow treadmill running to count toward the daily minimum mile, I wouldn’t go that route. Like a lot of the other men and women on the USRSA registry, I resolved that for me, running meant running outdoors.

So for the past 856 days, regardless of the weather, I’ve spent at least ten minutes outside doing my daily mile.

I think about it a lot at this time of year because this is when it gets most difficult. Cold temperatures; ice on the ground; and such an early nightfall. Yesterday I had an all-day on-site contract position which would keep me away from home from 8:30 AM to 6 PM, so I did my run first thing in the morning. It was still pitch black out, and even though the freezing temperatures of the weekend had abated somewhat, the result was melting ice and slushy puddles all over the roadway. In the dark, I slipped and slid and stepped in frigid puddles that my headlamp failed to pick out ahead of me.

Still, I believe ultimately it’s a positive thing to stay in close touch with the natural environment. There are plenty of days in the winter I don’t feel like going out for a run. During our first year of daily running together, my son Tim and I almost always had to run in the dark on weekdays because of my work schedule. Coping with icy winds, slippery roads, patches of snow and sleety rainfall was part of the foundation of the tight bond we forged during that first year of running together. Together we discovered that there’s almost no temperature so low – at least in Massachusetts – that three layers of fleece can’t make it bearable for ten minutes. We learned to wear face masks and scarves as well as hats and gloves. We bought Yak Traks, the nylon webbing that stretches over the soles of shoes to give runners traction. We endured.

Now it’s winter again, and I’m already dealing with snow (not a lot, but enough to make the footpaths treacherous), ice, and short daylight hours again. But having to cope with those conditions, even by choice, even for just ten or twelve minutes a day, reminds me of the cyclical nature of seasons. We’re only a week from Winter Solstice. The daylight will soon last longer; the ice will melt. Springtime running will be back before I know it.

Rainy late-summer Saturday

Due to Tropical Storm Danny passing listlessly off-shore, it's a rainy and dreary day here. Strangely, I found myself looking forward to running in the rain, which was falling steadily by midmorning, and the reports were for downpours by the afternoon, so I went earlier than usual, in the late morning. I took the dog and we did three miles and the rain didn't bother me a bit: the cool air felt refreshing and the rain just seemed like a soothing steady backdrop to the rhythm of my feet. Everything about running suddenly seems easier now that the air has cooled and the humidity eased.

Though no doubt disappointing to people with late-vacation plans, the weather seems fitting to me and appropriate to what I want to get done today: organize the household and ourselves for back-to-school time. It's always so tempting to believe that being organized at the start of the year means everything will stay that way for the next nine months. It's like tidying up a room really well and wanting to believe everything will somehow stay exactly in place rather than gradually drifting into disarray again: if we start the school year with early bedtimes, clean clothes, a roster of nutritious lunches and a tidy workspace for homework, the whole year will somehow fall into place. I know it won't really happen that way, but surely getting off on a good foot is the right first step.

When I was growing up, I put such faith in school supplies: buy the right notebooks and highlighters and a year of good study habits would follow. Unfortunately, no quantity of school supplies could make up for my innate tendency to disorganization, procrastination and poor prioritization skills. (And by "poor prioritization skills," I of course mean watching a boys soccer game rather than doing homework. Fancy terminology!) School supplies are neither a crutch nor an issue for us now because every child is given the same standardized list of what to buy, which is both easy and reassuring. As a mother, though, I still look at all the different ways I can try to get this school year off on the right foot and only hope that a strong start will pay off.

I asked both of the kids to make lists of bag lunches they would actually eat rather than toss and snacks they wouldn't complain about. We've talked about what time Tim will have to get up now that he's on the earlier school schedule, and whether he should walk, bike or take the bus to school. Holly has her wardrobe for the first week lined up and ready to go. With Tim, what to wear to school is more a matter of my rejecting various choices than his selecting them. I myself started moving my wake-up time five minutes earlier every day beginning last Monday in hopes that I can ratchet back to 6 AM fairly painlessly by Wednesday.

Nutritionists always tell us that eating a well-balanced and robust breakfast is the healthiest way to start the day, and I'll use that as my metaphor: being as prepared as I can be for the first day of school is, I hope, the best way to ensure a successful school year. One characterized by strong study habits, happy children and a minimum of early-morning chaos. We'll find out soon enough.