A Walker in the Suburbs

A night of little sleep means an even longer longest day for me. I think of Stonehenge and the revelers there, allowed to mill about among the stones. I think of northern climes, of places where the sun will scarcely set tonight. And of all the riotous green of our own corner of the world, fed by spring showers and storms. Now summer is here, the play of sun upon the leaves, late day light slanting in from the west. Seasonal change always has a bit of the mysterious about it — never more so than today.

Winter here has been less dramatic than in other parts of the country, but it has still bludgeoned and humbled us. Now in our third month of below-average temperatures, we turn up our collars, we pull on our gloves, we take our own warm bodies, all that we have, onto ice-slicked sidewalks, along frost-heaved roads. We push ourselves through the teens, the twenties, if we’re lucky the thirties.

I know this sounds wimpy to you denizens of the north, to residents of Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas — but I want out of winter.

The thing is, persistent cold steels the soul, locks it up tight till springtime. Every year I try to play along. I walk through it and I read and write through it. I cook through it. I work through it. Most of all, though, I dream through it — dream of a sunny deck, the smell of highly chlorinated water on a summer day, a hammock beneath the trees as green leaves wag overhead.

The winter stream is a study in contrasts. In some places a layer of ice like the skin on just boiled milk stretches from bank to bank, puckered and wrinkled and vaguely flesh-like. The current pulses beneath that thin shell, and water pushes out a few feet downstream where the creek is not yet frozen. The flicker of life as the stream erupts there reminds me of the play of tiny insects on the summer surface.

In other places a ripple of white ice has formed and it bobs beside logs and patches of leaves. The flowing water rushes past it like a dark, living thing, like a large, furtive fish. The creek is shallow at this point but the banks are steep. If you look down you can see in the winter current a hint of the riotousness of spring.

Snow has been scarce this winter, but frigid air has been plentiful. Many days it’s been served up with a stiff northwest breeze. I’ve kept walking along the frost-hard trails and through the grit that accumulates along the side of the roads. I’ve done it for my sanity, to thumb my nose at the season — and to soak up whatever mood-altering sunlight I can.

It was 7 degrees this morning when I woke up. Seven! Seven makes a lovely time, age or chapter. But not temperature.

These chilly days remind me of my years in Chicago. Seven degrees above zero was balmy in that city. One day I learned after I’d already left for work that the school where I taught was closed for the day. It was 21 degrees below zero (actual temperature, not wind chill). I’d grown so accustomed to the cold that I hadn’t wondered why everyone was running, not walking, down the street.

It was winter that drove me from that city. Winters can do that, you know.