Deep snow, narrow roadways

Despite the near-record snowfall of this winter, I’ve spent plenty of time outside. Due to my good fortune in living on a cul-de-sac with very little traffic and having a reliable plow service, I’ve been able to continue my running streak with a daily mile or two, take frequent walks, and even continue my ten-mile-run habit on Saturdays.

So when I read an article recently about people becoming morose from lack of fresh air and exercise, I didn’t think it applied to me.

And then one day as I was letting the dog out into the yard, where, ever since the snowpiles grew taller than she is – several storms ago – she’s had to run along the one narrow path we shoveled for her, turn around, and run straight back, I realized not all outdoor time counts equally. 

Because I’ve been feeling like the dog recently: running – or walking, or doing anything – on one straight path. And even though that’s better than not getting out at all, it still feels confining.

Part of this is my own fault for not finding other options. Most winters I replace my occasional walks in the woods with snowshoeing. But even snowshoeing has been impractical this winter, with frigid temperatures most days and snow so fluffy that in four feet of snow, the snowshoes still sink three feet.

Getting out at all in this weather is a privilege, but I miss the feeling of open space. I miss walking through the woods or even just across the lawn. Like the dog, I’m tired of every path being so very narrowly circumscribed.

Fresh air, sunshine, and exercise are all important to our emotional well-being, but so is a sense of open space, I’m beginning to realize. Walking or running in a singular line is better than nothing, but I can hardly wait until the snow melts and I can walk in any direction at all once again.

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.

More snow to come

Clear and cold for the next couple of days, and then, according to the forecasters, more snow.

I feel sheepish in admitting that my heart leaps a little bit with those words.

What is it about snow lately that sparks a pulse of excitement? Why am I finding myself a state more typical of childhood than middle age, in which the prospect of being snowed in once again thrills me?

I’m not sure. All I know is that after several somewhat curmudgeonly years in which a snowstorm, while pretty, connoted all kinds of inconveniences, it seems I’ve reverted to childhood in my delight at the mere words “snow day.”

When I try to trace the evolution of my relationship to snow through the past few years, it begins to make a little bit of sense. As a young professional in my twenties, I lived in the city and walked to work. Snow meant a cold, messy trudge through slush and over snowbanks to get wherever I needed to be, and against a backdrop of gray buildings and parked cars rather than meadows and forests, snow just didn’t seem so pretty or romantic.

Then I discovered another perspective on snow, as a homeowner in the suburbs. In our first home, snow meant shoveling and snowblowing our driveway, and stress over how to get to the office. This was before the days of telecommunications, and a forecast of snow meant a restless night of worrying about the drive to work – or an anxious day in the office thinking about the homeward commute.

Once we moved out to the country, it wasn’t a matter of shoveling or snowblowing anymore. We lived next door to my parents’ farm, and they had all the snow-clearing equipment anyone would need to keep a driveway usable.

But that wasn’t so ideal either. My father took care of plowing on the farm, our driveway as well as theirs, and hearing him out in the middle of the night plowing made me feel anxious and guilty, even though I knew he wasn’t doing it specifically for my sake. Still, I couldn’t much enjoy a heavy snowfall, knowing it meant he was setting his alarm at regular intervals throughout the pre-dawn hours to get out for another round of plowing.

And from there came my kids’ early childhood days, when a snowday brought them glee but me still further worries. Which parent would be the one to miss work and stay home if the kids didn’t have school? By this time Internet connections and other telecommuting capabilities were a natural part of our lives, but little kids and a work-from-home day aren’t a productive mix. It made me happy to see the kids having fun in the snow, but there was still an element of uneasiness as the unmet deadlines piled up.

But somehow in the past few years, that changed. We moved to a different house, where we pay for a professional plow driver whose truck headlights cutting through the pre-dawn darkness don’t make me feel guilty at all. Of course, in the back of my mind is the awareness that across town my father is still getting up before down to clear their driveway, but at least I don’t feel complicit anymore. And the kids, now in middle school and high school, certainly aren’t any trouble on a snow day: their preference is to sleep until ten, read, maybe play a few rounds of ping-pong.

So I suppose my reborn affinity for snow comes from the fact that we’ve come full circle. My life is now at the point where I can feel like a kid again when I hear that there’s snow in the forecast. With my own kids, I can revel in the unexpected chance to sleep late, and then be home all day and not have to dress for work or drive anywhere. While they read or play ping-pong, I can still get work done and not worry about missing deadlines.

Somehow the coziness is back, the feeling of being unexpectedly but joyfully circumscribed by the house for the day, the extra time created by cancellations. It wasn’t something I expected to find again; I had come to assume in adulthood that only kids could really relish snow days.

But I was wrong. And if I have yet another chance this winter – this very week – to remember that, all the better.

Slow down

I had a particularly pleasant drive home from work yesterday evening.

It was supposed to be an awful commute. The meteorologist on the radio had been warning for days that the dreaded “wintery mix” would kick in during the late afternoon and reach its peak right around 5 p.m. Rush hour would be a mess, he warned, with cars slipping and sliding everywhere.

This alarmed me somewhat. Rick and I took a leap of faith last fall when we bought our second Prius, conceding that we were trading in any possibility of easy winter driving for the enticement of minimal fuel usage. Priuses are terrific vehicles, as we knew from having owned our first one already for eighteen months, but they’re not known for handling the snow.

So I should have continued to feel nervous as I watched the snow begin to fall outside the office window late yesterday afternoon. It appeared that the radio meteorologist had nailed it: wintry mix starting late afternoon, making for an awful commute.

Yet my commute wasn’t awful at all; it was lovely. I simply made a conscious decision before I left the office not to let fear prevail. Yes, it’s snowing, I told myself. But you will be driving home on an interstate highway. It will be well plowed and well lighted. Just drive slowly and chances are good that you’ll be fine. As our minister emeritus likes to say, quoting Jesus, “Be not afraid.”

And I wasn’t afraid. I just decided I’d drive slowly. Other people were doing the same. It felt safe. It felt easy. It felt relaxing. All this despite the wintry mix.

It underscored for me how much of a service we do ourselves to just slow down – sometimes slow down drastically. My dangerous commute in bad weather was fine because I resolved before I started that I would drive as slowly as I wanted to. No one honked at me or seemed annoyed. Those who wanted to go faster pulled into another lane, but plenty of people stayed behind me as well. I guess they wanted to go slowly too.

Two weeks ago I had dental surgery and came home from it with an overwhelming feeling of pleasure in the fact that I’d cleared my schedule for the next two days and could spend the whole afternoon reading. This past weekend I had been planning a trip to Maine that had to be cancelled at the last minute; as a result I was home all weekend having made no plans. I was sorry not to be in Maine, but again, it was a weekend absolutely free of scheduled commitments. I could move as slowly as I wanted from one thing to the next – or not move along at all.

Being in the car during rush hour wasn’t really all that much like being at home with no plans, but all three events reminded me of how good it is to have enforced slowness imposed upon us once in a while. I arrived home safely with not so much as a skid. Or a honk. It’s hard to slow down, but sometimes it’s necessary and sometimes it’s just good. I felt safe and sane for having taken my time, and I was reminded once again that the right time to slow things way down isn’t only on snowy highways, but any time you just need to step out of the fast lane for a little bit.

Perfect conditions

All it took was one good snowfall of six inches or so late last month followed by a cold snap to make perfect conditions for sledding. And as I had been telling the kids, perfect sledding conditions may come along only once per season – or maybe, such as with last winter, not at all during any given winter season – so they need to do all the sledding they can while the conditions last.

And they have been. They’ve sledded on the driveway, at NARA Park, at friends’ houses. They understand that sledding isn’t like swimming, for which you can pretty much count on two dozen or more days on which to do in any given summer. Sledding conditions are complicated, and when you get them, you have to grab them.

But last weekend I had to remind myself that the same is true of snowshoeing. Good conditions for snowshoeing come along only occasionally in any given winter, and you can’t make excuses for letting those opportunities slip by. So on Sunday, when my mother suggested that we take our snowshoes over to Towle Field for an hour, I knew what the right answer was.

But even as we started out on the trail, I felt preoccupied by all the other things on my To Do list for the afternoon. I had intended to dust and vacuum. I should prep some dinners for the upcoming weeknights. I should run loads of laundry. I should read the Sunday New York Times.

But at a certain point, I recognized that all of those “shoulds” were distracting me from this critical reality: I was out snowshoeing. And I love snowshoeing. Last winter I didn’t get out on my snowshoes at all, not one time, because we had only about two days with snow. By fall, I was already thinking about how much I hoped to fit in some snowshoeing this winter. And there we were Sunday, with a free afternoon and perfect conditions.

With that in mind, I tried my best to will away thoughts of housework and article deadlines and focus on the fact that after over a year of waiting, I was back out on snowshoes. I can’t explain even to myself why I enjoy this so much. There’s no thrill to snowshoeing, and there’s not really any particular challenge. It’s really just taking a walk in the snow.

But there’s something that feels so majestic about marching along on top of the snowdrifts, and something so therapeutic about forging through the slight resistance of the powder. It gives a feeling of both height and strength which no other sport gives me.

Not surprisingly, the dusting and laundry were still there when I got home after an hour of trekking through the snowy forests and fields.  None of that work had gone anywhere in my absence: like a faithful pet, it waited patiently at home. With darkness falling early, I still had hours left in the day for housework and deskwork. But I’d also managed to fit in one perfect hour of snowshoeing. So maybe I was right to just listen to my own advice for once. Because as I always tell the kids about sledding, those conditions are rare enough that you just can’t let them pass you by.

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.

A snow-free winter wonderland

“Winter wonderland” is one expression we haven’t heard much this season. Just as in the Christmas carol of that name, it usually seems more applicable to a snow-covered landscape with ice crystals and fluffy white drifts than the barren brown expanse that so far has typified winter of 2011/12 in New England.

But last week on the NPR show Science Friday, host Ira Flatow and his panel of guests – including an astronomer, a meteorologist and a naturalist – gave that very name to their discussion of winter, and devoted the hour to all the ways in which winter is indeed a wonderland even without snowmen, snowflakes and sledding.

And as I look around, I have to agree. True, there’s something unnerving about a relatively warm, snow-free winter, but absent the irrefutable romance of snow, I’m reminded of all the other wonders of winter. The full moon was unusually bright last weekend; an article in the Boston Globe explained that the moon looks brighter in the winter because the sun is so low, detracting less from the light of the moon. The experts on Science Friday discussed other aspects of astronomy and meteorology that make the nature of winter unique as well, even without snow.

I’ve been walking in the woods almost daily ever since Christmas. The frozen ground is easy to navigate; what were muddy puddles and damp earthen patches in the fall are now solid ruts that make for easy balance. The bare branches yield to long sight lines through the forest. Ice edges the brooks and ponds, making lacy scalloped patterns contrasted against the black water. In the morning, gray dusk seeps slowly down from the sky while I’m already well into breakfast preparations. The sun, still so low in the sky, slants against the tree trunks to create dramatic angular shadows late in the day.

Sometimes, on mild spring days or warm summer evenings, I wonder how it could possibly not be preferable to live someplace with a year-round warm climate. Once we are far from winter on the calendar, it’s sometimes hard for me to remember that this frozen season has its own merits.

But in the cold, still air of January, the earth feels quiet and invites contemplation. And so this is the time of year, with or without snow, that I remember just what about winter makes it a wonderland, year after year.

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.

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.