I greet every season with personal rituals. Maybe it is part of living in the country and living a little closer to nature.
Greeting warm weather is all about joy: spying the first crocus, picking the earliest strawberries, getting my sailboat ready for another season and, in general, rejoicing that winter is over.
But bracing for cold weather is all about finding comfort and wallowing in denial. I try not to think about the long stretch of bare trees and gray days that lie ahead. My brother Tim, who once lived in Australia for two years, used to regale us with stories of heat waves in December and Christmas barbecues, and we envied him. But winter has to come sometime. We in the Northeast can’t avoid it forever. So rituals are my way of coping.
Bracing for winter is about seeking comfort and wallowing in denial.
A sure sign that the weather is going to get cold is when the geese leave for the southern migration, honking to each other (I imagine them saying, “Who has the map?”) in their beautiful “V” formation for efficient travel. This year the migration started in September. I always feel a bit mournful, watching them leave. It might be my imagination, but I swear that there are more geese leaving this year. Sign of a tough winter to come? I hope not.
About a month ago, geese flew so low in the sky just above where I stood that I could hear a rhythmic whirring of dozens of wings as they passed overhead. Another day, curiously, I could see the normal “V” formation of the geese and right beside them, a smaller group of four or five young geese flying in their own little flock. They formed what I supposed was “the kids’ table” of the sky, the way our older relatives used to make all the young cousins eat together during holiday meals.
At night, I know the cold is really coming when the winter constellations are on the rise. One star formation is the Great Square of Pegasus, which I see every night now beginning in the southwest sky. It is not a constellation on its own, but an asterism, in which stars from several different constellations form a noticeable shape in the sky.
But the most prominent winter constellation is always Orion, the Hunter, facing Taurus, with his fiery red eye, the star Aldebaran. When Orion begins to peek over the eastern horizon in November, it’s my signal to get out my warmest down comforter for my bed.
My comforter is more than 20 years old and is still thick, fluffy and beautiful, with a silver and blue-green pattern that brightens up the bedroom. It is luxurious and makes me feel like a queen. I am still chortling over buying it new for $26 at a fundraiser for my daughter’s eighth-grade class; by now, my use has cost a little over a dollar a year, a very good deal by any measure. When the comforter gets too hot for me, it will be a sure sign of spring. But for now, as the days get colder in our drafty, 250-year-old house, the cover keeps me snug even on the chilliest night.
Speaking of chills, our old colonial home is heated three different ways. We have a furnace, a pellet stove that keeps the kitchen toasty and a wood stove in the family room. It comes in handy not being reliant on just one source of heat. Several years ago, the furnace stopped working for two days before we noticed.
Pete and I have always needed plenty of wood for winter, so splitting wood is another winter ritual. We’ve had wood stoves beginning with our first purchase of a fixer-upper house more than 35 years ago. The new stoves all have catalytic converters now, so I feel less guilty about the smoke. Nonetheless, the pleasure I get from splitting wood for the stove defies all reason.
When I was a LOT younger, I used to split wood with a long-handled axe. Wielding it was soul-satisfying; if you hit the wood just right, it would split neatly, with so little effort it felt magical. Now I am content with using a log splitter to pare down the wood to a size small enough for the stove. Sometimes Pete and I do it together. An afternoon’s work can keep the stove fed for two weeks.
It does me good to engage in physical labor. When I fill up the back of our small John Deere Gator with newly split wood, the reward of my labors seems tangible, measurable, more so at times than intellectual work like writing.
And it’s just as well that I enjoy the exercise. We have a long winter ahead of us before I hear the welcome sound of the geese returning and see Orion finally descend ever lower in the sky.
Lovely, Casey. I have to learn to enjoy winter, now that I'll be spending my first winter in something like 27 years in the north woods. (We were snowbirds until my husband died in 2022)
I don't split wood--I leave that to others--but I do love a good fire in my fireplace stove.
I hope you'll write more about your winter adventures. I'm anxious to see how it goes!
You are a Wonder Woman of words and wood‼️When the zombie apocalypse hits I’m heading your way...