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Category: seasons

Warm and Light

Warm and Light

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In my quest to be winter-hardy, I’ve discovered the many virtues of merino wool. I have a couple of merino wool blend “base layers,” which in the old days I would have called undershirts, and I’m wearing them now underneath everything: turtlenecks and cardigans and pullovers and sweatshirts. 

The fact that we keep our house temperature in the mid-60s means that I need at least three layers even when inside. When I go for a walk I throw a jacket over the ensemble, cover my ears and hands, and I’m good to go.

The key, I’ve realized, is warmth without weight. It sounds like an advertisement for pricey athleisure wear — in fact, I’m pretty sure it is — but it actually works. I feel warm with three layers on, providing one of them is my base layer.  And the “weightlessness” means I’m not stuffed like a sausage into my clothes. Warm and still able to bend my arms — what more could I want?

Rejoice!

Rejoice!

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Yesterday was Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent, when the message shifts from one of “beware and prepare” to “rejoice and prepare.” 

I love both Advent messages. For that matter, I love Advent. It’s a season of anticipation — and isn’t anticipating an event usually always better than the event itself? 

More than two decades ago, I happened to read Kathleen Norris’s book The Cloister Walk during Advent. It was a busy time for me as a writer and a parent, and when I’d collapse in bed each night I’d savor a chapter or two of this fine volume and be transported into the silence of the cloister.

The image I have of Advent is one of cold stone and plainsong, of middle-of-the-night awakenings for prayer and devotion. Though Norris spent time in a monastery in Minnesota, it was the old churches of Europe that came to mind as I visualized her progress through the liturgical year. The long centuries of hope condensed into an annual calendar. 

By the reckonings of that calendar, we have already begun a new year. 

The Standout

The Standout

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It’s a broad, bare expanse I see when I look out an upstairs window now. Tall, straight trunks sprouting tangles of limbs and branches — all  brown or gray or a shade yet unnamed that is their pairing( (bray?). 

If it’s a sunny day, add a splash of blue for the sky. If it’s not, then a lighter shade of gray for the firmament.

The eye, in this case, is drawn to the standouts, the few trees yet to lose their leaves. There’s only one of those left in the backyard — a shrub of some indeterminate breed. But what a thrill it is to spy its rich crimson. 

“Here I am,” it seems to shout. “All is not lost.” 

Winter Sight

Winter Sight

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As seasons pass, dimensions change and distances shrink. The greenery that hemmed us in only last month has thinned and drooped. Leaves have shriveled and blown away. What was once a screen is now an open book.

We hear about winter light, the low-slanting sun, but not as much about winter sight.

My woods walks lately reveal shiny new objects: small metal discs hammered into tree bark. Some trees have been tagged recently because the metal gleams and the discs swing freely on their nails. The older discs have dimmed and dulled; some you can hardly see because they have been swallowed up by bark. The trees have grown around them. Eventually those markers will seem little more than a metal eye.

While these older markers have been there all along, I saw them as if for the first time over the weekend. It was the winter landscape that drew my eyes to them, the same bare expanse that lets us glimpse a hidden stream or the outline of a hill, once shrouded in green. It is winter sight.

Aural Warmth

Aural Warmth

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It’s our first frost of the season, and though I haven’t ventured outside yet, I can predict how it will feel: crunchy beneath the feet, the white spears of grass tufted and hardened, winter here before we’ve even seen the first days of December.

It was 27 when I woke up this morning — and 62 inside the house, which we are keeping cooler for various reasons, including stuffy sinuses and easing the transition from inside to outside (thus prolonging this infatuation I have with working al fresco). 

I have to say it feels mighty fine now to work inside the house, with hot air pouring from the vents, warming the air to a relatively toasty 67. Even the sound of the furnace makes me feel warm. As does the roar of the electric kettle coming to a boil. 

If warmth were aural we could do away with hats, scarves and mittens, so I know a lot of this is in my head. But they are lovely sounds just the same. 

Two Novembers

Two Novembers

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I knew I would catch it after yesterday’s post, waxing rhapsodic about our “two homes,” about the human need for outside time, for the comfort and the balm of nature.

Yesterday, nature was definitely without her diadem. A stiff breeze bore down on us all day, not enough to reroute the Dulles air traffic but powerful enough to “prune” the trees and make walking a trial. Copper and I ventured twice into the tempest: once in the morning and once in the afternoon.

Here’s a shot I snapped during the latter. I’ll use it to remind myself that, just as we have two homes, so also do we have two Novembers. One is warm sun on the face and the scent of dry leaves; it lures us to sit on the deck stairs and take in the scene. 

The other is what we had yesterday: raw skies and an angry wind. That November has one message for us: go inside! 

Leaf Meal

Leaf Meal

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I borrow this term from the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who in “Spring and Fall to a Young Child,” wrote of Goldengrove unleaving and of “worlds of wanwood [that] leafmeal lie.” 

Here is my leaf meal — what is left of the Kwanzan cherry’s foliage, which disappeared in a day. 

I shivered when I saw it, and not just from the chill wind that followed the rain (and which, paired with the rain, brought down the leaves). 

I shivered because looking at that bare trunk I felt winter in my face — and the single-mindedness of seasonal change. 

November Question

November Question

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Warm Novembers confront us with a question: Is it the early darkness that makes the month gloomy — or the cold temperatures? Melville would say the latter, I think, at least he would if we take the famous opening lines of Moby Dick with its “damp, drizzly November in my soul” as proof of where the novelist stood on the matter.

For many of us, though, it’s not just the damp drizzle; it’s also the early darkness, the dying of the light. I saw this first hand in the parakeets yesterday. Lulled into autumnal complacency by the mid-70 temps, I brought the birds out onto the deck to share the glass-topped table with me as I worked. 

They were chattering and happy, doing their best to respond to wild bird calls … until the sun began slanting lower and lower in the sky.  Then, as if on cue, they quieted and calmed, began tucking their heads into their wings. 

Even when it’s warm, the early darkness has its way with us. 

Gathering Rosebuds

Gathering Rosebuds

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The weather gods have given us one more warm day, one more day to walk and bounce and write outside before the cold moves in. It could be 30 degrees cooler tomorrow than it is today.

I can hear the lawnmower outside. Does it only seem more fast and frantic because I’m feeling that way about making the most of this day?

The second bloom roses I’ve been enjoying brought this verse to mind:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
   Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
   Tomorrow will be dying.

Seasonal Migration

Seasonal Migration

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It’s time for the annual migration. I’m not talking about birds flying south for the winter but of the seasonal switch from shorts and t-shirts to tights and sweaters. 

One thing struck me yesterday as I laundered and folded and ran up and down the stairs carrying warm clothes up and cool clothes down. It was that many of these clothes would be better off going not up or down but out of the house entirely.

How many sweaters and shirts and scarves do I hang onto because I love the person who gave them to me? The answer is … many! 

Yesterday I told myself once again that I need to stop hanging onto these duds. It’s one thing to have papers and books and knick-knacks you cannot bear to part with … but to have clothes that are this way, too, is far more inconvenient. What’s required is a certain ruthlessness. I’m awaiting its arrival.