Cold and colder

There is a lot to love about early January.

And even those parts not so easy to love seem to summon respect.

Yesterday morning's run was as cold a run as I've experienced in years. My legs under my running pants were freezing. My fingers inside my gloves were freezing. My face was freezing unless I tucked it inside my scarf, in which case it was hard to breathe.

Frigid temperatures while running may not be my favorite part of winter, but they are a part I respect. January should be cold. It's the shortest (almost) and darkest (almost) part of the year, with none of the institutionalized cheer of December and none of the prospect for thaw of February. It's the heart of winter.

And paradoxically, it feels like a heart. It feels like within the chilly, still, nighttime air, buried under the snow, suspended inside the icicles, lies the promise of something wonderful. The promise of nature cycling along. The promise of a long darkening autumn leading to a frigid winter which in turn will lead to a spring thaw.

Of course, in New England the seasons don't progress quite that methodically, especially in the 21st century. Frigid days often break for a sudden unseasonable melting. Just yesterday, my son was recalling two years ago when he went running in a t-shirt on a seventy-degree January day over a slick of ice -- a conflation of weather circumstances that made running simultaneously delightful (becauase of the warmth) and wildly treacherous (because of the melting ice).

My feeling is that if it's winter, there should be snow, and this year there is. After a nearly barren season last winter, we have about six inches of powder on the ground already. On New Year's Day I took the kids sledding, and the conditions were better than I've seen them in years: packed powder without a drop of melting going on. Eventually, I found it too cold to stay outside and ended up warming up in the car for the last thirty minutes of their 90-minute sledding session, but I was happy to see that they were more stalwart than I was and stayed out as long as they could to enjoy a great afternoon of sledding.

So yes: the weather is cold and bleak and still. But shouldn't January be that way? The merriment of December is behind us; the promise of spring still lies far ahead. It's time for in-gathering: taking in the stillness and letting it permeate our souls, until all is still and quiet, at least for a moment or two. 

Let the rest of the year teem with activity and action: vacation fun in the summer, busy schedules in the fall, baseball and walks and hikes in the spring. WInter commands stillness, at least for some of the time. As the days stay dark and cold, all is quiet, at least once in a while. And it seems important to honor that stillness, and the cold, and the quiet, as this brief time of year rolls around once again.

January running

We’re in the thick of winter – and it’s the thickest thick of winter I can recall in many years. We have piles and piles of snow on the ground, record low temperatures this week, and more snow (plus sleet and rain!) in the forecast.

Needless to say, that poses a challenge to runners.

My problem is not generally the cold, though when the temperature is lower than about 20 degrees, I admit that the cold can be hard to counter. But the real problem right now is the snowbanks. Carlisle’s Department of Public Works simply does not have the manpower to clear the footpaths throughout the winter, and the houses along our meandering country pathways are not close enough together to expect homeowners to clear their own stretch, like in the city. Running on the road, though feasible at other times of year, is a terrible idea right now because the snowbanks are so high as to make it very difficult to get off the road if need be when a car is approaching. As a runner, I may be tempted to do it anyway; but all it takes is a short drive while I imagine encountering a runner on the roadway next to my car to realize there just isn’t enough room for both.

Fortunately for me, the plow driver who has been maintaining our long dirt driveway this winter is doing an excellent job of keeping our own roadway nicely packed and neat, and that makes it possible to continue running through the winter. We’re almost a half-mile off the main road, with three other houses on the same common drive; simply by running to each house and then out to the road, I can log a full mile.

But, of course, I like to do more than a mile. And once in a while I push myself to do the circuit of all four houses and the end of the driveway two or three times in a row, but it gets very, very dull. Retracing my steps is never something I enjoy, on any running route; doing it on my own driveway, day after day, defines tedium. It’s true that the scenery here never gets boring – surrounded by trees and meadows, our setting provides an ever-changing panorama of the seasons and nature – but somehow that’s not so easy to appreciate as winter wears on and on.

I admit it: I’m bored. And cold. Committing to a daily running streak is a great discipline, and with 1,264 days under my belt, I’m not ready to give it up now. But this is definitely one of the low points, and if ever I dreamed of taking some time off from running, this is that time.

Nonetheless, being a little bit exasperated with the limitations that winter weather puts on daily running serves a useful purpose as well. It reminds me once again of how much I love running under better conditions. Before starting my running streak, this was the part of the year I took off from running. I’d give it up for the whole of winter and early spring. And then as the snow started to melt, there would inevitably come a day in March – or even during a particularly mild spell in late February – when I couldn’t wait to get back out for my run. My body would start absolutely craving the feeling of the asphalt under my running shoes and the cold air hitting my face.

Now that I run every day, I don’t get that craving that comes from a respite anymore. But restricting myself to a mile or so on the driveway every day has nearly the same effect. It’s only late January, and I have every reason to believe the limitations of winter running will impose themselves for another month or more, but when the snowbanks melt, I’ll be ready. I’ll be even more eager to leave the safe dull confines of the common driveway than I am now, and my usual daily two-miler through the town center and back will have never looked so good.

With spring comes the end of hibernation. Once, my hibernation involved no running at all; now it involves one boring mile a day. The snow will melt, and when that happens, I’ll be more than ready to hit the road – the big road, with its myriad choices of running routes and wide variety of scenery – once again.

Early-winter running

Suddenly, it’s cold.

Not cold by Far North terms, and not even cold by winter-in-New-England terms. But cold for late autumn, which it technically is for another twelve days or so. I’ve been waking before dawn this week to temperatures still in the twenties; even in the middle of the day the mercury doesn’t hit forty. For early December, that’s chilly.

And I’m a little alarmed by how hard I’m finding it to adjust to cold-weather running, even for the twenty-five or thirty minutes I’m out doing my daily weekday two-miler. I’ve run in far colder weather than this, I remind myself. I’ve run in single-digit wind chills, blizzards, frigid temperatures. Two years ago, during a January weekend in northeast Connecticut, I ran five miles on a morning so cold my eyelashes froze.

This isn’t like that. Not at all. But somehow after the nine months of spring, summer and fall, I’ve forgotten the feeling of a chilly wind on my face, a cold breeze blowing down my neck. Even temperatures in the twenties feel startling to me right now.

But I know I have to get used to it. Winter hasn’t even begun yet, and with more than 1,200 days of consecutive running under my belt, I’m not planning to stop this winter unless unforeseen circumstances make it necessary. The cold weather is just setting in; I need to remember all over again how to layer the fleece and forge ahead into the wind. I need to renew the mindset that it’s good to feel a frigid wind as you start out because that means it will be behind you on the return, and I need to get reacquainted with the itchy, damp feeling of a sweaty wool hat on my head.

Besides, there are positive aspects to this cold snap. Once I’ve settled into the rhythm of the run, I find it invigorating. There’s a pure, icy edge to the air that makes each frosty breath feel cleansing. And the frozen ground is firm under my feet, even on the sections of the driveway that are muddy once the temperature rises into the forties.

So far, no snow has fallen, and that’s fine with me too. Snow is so pretty, but I’m not fond of the wet or slushy or slippery aspects of running in the snow. But that will come too in time, and then, just as with the cold, I’ll struggle with it at first, then remind myself I’ve coped with snow plenty of times before, and then gradually re-acclimate myself to its challenges and pleasures: the feathery fluffiness of snow beneath my running shoes, the muffled squeak as I run in tire tracks, the soft thump of running in powder.

Before I was a “streak runner” committed to running every day, I used to take the whole winter off. I’m glad that now I try to run through the cold and the snow. It’s challenging. It’s invigorating. And it reminds me that every condition – in running and otherwise – has its positives and negatives, its challenges and rewards.

A word for February: Patience

In this post last month, I took a close look at the one-word challenge: the exercise of coming up with a singular word as a theme for the upcoming year.

Having selected my word for the year, I wasn’t trying to come up with a word for the month, but a word keeps whispering itself to me each night when I stand outside our front door looking at the night sky and taking a last deep breath of cold winter air before locking the house up for the evening. Patience.

Patience during this long, dull, cold part of the winter. No Christmas holidays to build toward; none of the enticing hibernation of January. We’ve done our hibernating; we’re ready to get back outside, thanks. But it’s still so cold, with temperatures in the teens or twenties every day and a bitter wind blowing. The ice on our driveway is so deep and dark it looks like stone; it’s been weeks now since anything frozen melted. I wish it would go away: I’m tired of wearing three layers of outerwear for my daily run, and I’m not even enjoying the running anymore because the face mask that protects my skin from the wind hampers my deep breathing so much.

But still: patience. It’s the time of year for just waiting the winter out.

Groundhog experiences aside, another month or more of winter weather is still likely at this point. In early March, it’s reasonable to grow impatient for a thaw, for milder days. Mid-February, on the other hand, is still way too early to lose one’s winter endurance.

Besides, the days are rapidly growing longer. I drove home well after five o’clock this afternoon and the sky was still light, turning pink and purple near the horizon. Longer afternoons come well before warmer ones, but they remind us that the earth is making its journey toward summer and the sun’s presence is increasing.

There are other reasons to think “patience” right now as well. I’ll be patient with the writing assignments that are uninspiring, and I’ll wait patiently for those that need outside encouragement to find the right reader. I’ll be patient with Holly’s ongoing insistence on help getting dressed every morning, a task I so wish she would take on herself. Tim is already beginning to shed his yearly Seasonal Affective Disorder symptoms, probably because of the longer afternoons; he responded to me with unusual good cheer several times over the past few days, and it reminds me that my patience with his darker moods pays off when they lift.

I have patience, too, as I wait for our strangely behaving guinea pig, who shares my office space with me, to meet whatever fate is best for her: she’ll get over her recent lack of mobility or she’ll give up peacefully. The vet said one or the other was likely, and I should just wait it out.

Models of patience are all around me this month: my mother is following medical instructions by patiently wearing bandages to cover stitches for recent skin surgery although in her case I would have shed the bandages days ago out of self-consciousness, and my sister in DC gamely tells me the aftermath of the biggest snowstorm that area has seen in centuries really isn’t so bad, thanks to the fact they still have electricity.

So I’ll be patient with the kids as we find things to do during their school vacation week later this month, and patient with the prospect of more snow later this week, even as I wish it would all melt away. Because there must be a reason that the winter air itself is whispering a word to me. I’ll listen, and make the best use of it I can.

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.