winter
i do not like to be cold.
Despite this, winter is my favorite season. It speaks to me through gray, blustery days. In direct contrast with my odd brand of optimism and the way i cling to hope, the more dreary weather energizes me. When everyone around me moans about the seemingly endless stretch of bleak, i quietly smile.
The sky, you see, isn’t only gray. It is blanketed with heavy silver clouds, the cover so complete it looks, instead, cloudless. Impenetrable. When it lowers to kiss the ground, i consider it an embrace. i love walking in the fog.
Birds don’t brave the winter, and i am glad for their absence. Flowers hide as well, waiting for the spring, waiting to unfurl in a riot of color that beckons back the birds and the sun. The world around me wakes, and i watch it with wary eyes. Spring is about blossoming, opening, and beginning. It is not for me.
I find solace, through the spring and summer, in the violence of storms, and in the days of steady rain that come far less frequently than i’d like, less frequently than the world around me needs. Like the suffering earth, i crave the moisture.
Winter is quiet. Snowfalls, rare though they are, muffle and blanket. White tinged with silver and gray, the sky a monotone backdrop. i miss it.
And i miss you.
Are you sure you want to vistit the Borders….it can be slate “grey and grub” ……lol bright and crisp as it was today ….
Stuart,
~laughing softly~ Quite sure. All my destinations, with one exception, tend to be places that have a tendency toward grayness … mountains, rather than beaches. Such places quiet me.
elise
I guess it’s natural that winter is the time of reminising and dreams. Like you, I love winter although fall takes first place in the landscape of my heart. It’s something about the winding down, the knowing that soon a starker silence will prevail. The natural light becomes muted, but not yet grey, the aroma has an earthier tang with just a touch of smoke. Night comes more quickly and I grow eager yet content. Yes, fall is my time.
Kaz ~
Well described. i think we all have a favorite time of year, even if it isn’t one of the big four. Some are attached to a particular holiday or event, for instance.
“Starker silence.” Yes. i can bite into that. Thank you.
elise
Something about the bitter cold on skin and being able to see your breath make me feel more alive. Love a good, cold, gray, rainy day. Besides, the fireplace holds little appeal when it’s 95 and humid outside.
Speaking of weather, hope the severe stuff out your way left you and yours untouched.
-Kev
Kev ~
There is quite something to be said about being warm within when it is cold without.
Thank you for the concern. Yes, we were fine …
elise
I like the in-betweens … the times of rain and growth and dying. I like the days where clouds scud across the sky, and you shiver in your t-shirt, only to sweat an hour later when the sun comes back out. I like the weeks and months that encompass the coming and going of all shades of green and gold and brown … I don’t like the swelter box of summer, or drowning in snow in the winter. (We had over one hundred inches this winter, excessive, as far as I’m concerned!).
Beth,
i’ve never been big on the inbetweens. i’m very black and white in nearly everything.
elise
I love winter, because people hide indoors and I can enjoy being alone outside.
I must be a weirdo, because I always have birds chirping about, no matter what. Only a torrential downpour seems to stop them.
Maybe the birdseed I lay out has something to do with it???
What’s the one exception?
As Leonard Cohen said, whatever your destination, if you can say one thing youre there…
“And every breath we took was Hallelujah…”
even though LOL he actually said every breath we DREW was Hallelujah, sorry… —smile—
ray che ~
Crete. i love clean crispness i’ve seen in pictures of there. The blue awnings on the white houses, the dark rocks against the sandy beaches. The azure of the ocean.
i want to sit and write and drink it in.
elise
Then I wish you many Hallelujahs in Crete.
ray che ~
Thank you. i’m certain i’ll share my experiences when and if i get there.
elise