A Letter to Winter

Dear Winter,

Here you are nearer your end than your beginning and many are so very glad.

Surely you've heard.  You have been a most tweeted and talked about guest, not gossiped about since gossip occurs behind the talked-about-ones back.  You've gone viral multiple times. You've trended more than Miley.  You have been all over Facebook, the papers and media.  You and your offspring  have made headlines day after day.  The Weather Channel couldn't exist without you. You have stimulated the economies of bread, milk and plumbing companies.

Many have moaned about you as water pipes have burst.  I am grateful to have shut the water off each night and drained the pipes.  Except for the night we forgot and our bathroom became a temporary lake, I have not moaned in the typical way.  I do wonder as to the salt scattered about our roads and its effect on our watersheds in ways we are unaware and seem to not care.  I have wondered who owns Metro's salt contract and if the authorities are so afraid of lawsuits that they over salt the roads more than my grandparents did their food.

In the mid-west, my mother-in-law hasn't seen the grass in her front yard since before Christmas. About that, I would definitely moan.

Winter, I so dreaded you. I was dreading you a year ago when I told Jerry that I would be living elsewhere when you arrived.  I really meant it. I just didn't know where.

Months passed.  Your sibling Spring arrived and stayed and stayed.  Summer came late and didn't stay as long as usual.  Fall was similar to Spring. Then you came and I had not moved.  Well, I actually I did move.

In looking back, I became a morning one instead of a moaning one thanks to moves I made.

Inside I placed clear lights around the windows of the room in which I write, meditate and work. I still turn them on because I like their gentle glow.

Outside I placed a chair near the neighbor's fence by the ferns and Japanese maple.

We moved to this spot of Nashville Earth with its fence and house the year of the Nashville Ice Storm.  We enjoyed five days at least without power. We bundled up in bed, ate out some and walked a lot.  Then they began cutting the trees after the ice storm of 1994.  This stimulated the economies of cutting companies contracted from out of state as well as the anger of those of us who love trees.  And of course there hasn't been an ice storm of that magnitude since.

I have lived in this house for twenty years and thanks to you, Winter, I finally found this place where every morning I went to my office as it was dubbed.  I and two blankets, a scarf, hat, gloves, two pair of long underwear with pen, paper, coffee, camera and often a burning candle settled into a chair.  On a handful of rainy mornings, an umbrella became my roof.

My office on one those supposed to be icy days that never manifested.

Surrounded by colleagues, I watched, listened and wrote.

I could have easily missed you after the after-Christmas fight between Jerry and me. It wasn't a fight in the traditional sense. I awoke one morning to find he had raked and mulched all my leaves. He didn't know I was attached to the Japanese maple leaves all around my office floor. He was helping, picking up.  I was stunned.  It took me two days to recover. I got down on my knees as did he and  gathered leaves, Nature's carpeting, to scatter at my feet.  Carpeting was laid, we made up and I returned to work.

Ferns, fairies and a Great Northern Flicker are just some of the few that have spent time with me. The juncos left just this week.  I miss them yet it was time. They are the winter visitors that ate the millet I scattered each morning.  I still feel the joy I felt the December day I found they had arrived.

Chipmunk has reappeared and I finally saw a vole, kin I'm sure to the frozen one I laid to rest our first single digit day.

Winter, you have reminded me of Ice Ages past. Early cave man didn't have groceries to which to run and stock up.  I have pondered what it was like for people then.  I have imagined the Ice Age of the heart melting in our world today.

I have felt kin to Audubon, Aldo and Ansel while noting and photographing the visiting birds, the plants holding their own in various shades of brown and green as well as the trees anchoring my office walls and towering over me.

Oh and I can't forget the other towering Beings.

Bundled like a human burrito, Sun has towered over me many days and I have felt its energy inside me as I've never before experienced it.  While at night, Jupiter, Sirius, the Pleaides and Orion's belt have faithfully proceeded over my office gifting my colleagues and me with energy.

Winter, do you feel my joy and my deep gratitude?  You have given me parts of me that I didn't even know were missing. And though I will enjoy not wearing long underwear daily and I've already been outside barefoot this week, I will, like the juncos, so miss you.

Some people probably look at gray-haired, fifty-four year old me and think I am nearer my end than my beginning.  What they don't know is thanks to you, I am in my beginning, for you have allowed me to find this outer place that has revealed to me the inner places.

I SO love you,
Dawn

I wrote this in my office this morning then happened to look left while packing up to head inside. I started not to pick up the scrap nearby but was curious. What was this? I turned over this piece of plastic from ferns planted years ago and read: Pictum (the fern name).  Of course I thought, 'Yes, I picked em' these beautiful colleagues with which to hang out with this Winter. And for that I am so glad.