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Sunshine, Finally

Sunshine, Finally

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A friend who counsels people for a living said the last few weeks have been difficult for her patients. Depression, anxiety, fibromyalgia. People in the mid-Atlantic aren’t used to weeks and weeks of gray, rainy days — especially not in May — and they’ve taken their toll.

They would usually bother me more, but I’ve been caught up in a new job, and not paying as much attention to weather as I usually do.

Still, for a walker in the suburbs who’s been forced to row in the suburbs (on the erg in the basement, which means yet more — ouch! — sitting), it’s cramping my style, to say the least.

So today’s sunshine is more than welcome. It’s gratifying, life-enhancing, healing.

Time Warp

Time Warp

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Unseasonable weather creates a time warp.  Are these the first floundering days of March? A rainy patch in October? Or the sort of chilly midsummer I remember being called blackberry winter?

Strawberry winter is more like it.

These are usually our jewel-tone days, the azaleas and iris overlapping, rhododendrons too. They, by the way, are doing well this year; they thrive on moisture. But the others haven’t lived up to promise. They’ve been too busy staying alive.

I gave May a pass until we hit the double digits. But it’s the 11th. Time to get with it, May. We need some warm weather, and we need it now!

What to Wear

What to Wear

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These are the crazy first days of spring, capricious and erratic. The thermometer appears to be broken, so profoundly do its readings vary from morning till night. All we can do is hang on.

That — and figure out what to wear. Should we dress for morning or for afternoon? Or more precisely, should we be comfortable at 6 a.m. and sticky at 4? Or the other way around?

For me, it’s the former every time.  I’ll wear a turtleneck even though it’s going up to 70. But when I walk out the door and feel the first cold blast of 30-something-degree air, I’ll pull the sweater up to my chin and luxuriate in its warmth.

Last Stand

Last Stand

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Woke up to a white world. Each twig and limb covered with heavy, clinging snow. Deceptive in the gloaming, when shapes are not what they appear.

As the morning grew lighter I could make out black roads and driveway, grass tops bursting through the blanket. But the holly is still dolloped, and the first faint blooms of witch hazel, that thin yellow furze, are coated in frosting. Every few minutes the wind loosens a clump of snow, which retains its twig shape for an instant, then vanishes in a pouf of powder.

I looked ahead at the forecast; in a few days we’ll have 60s and 70s. This morning’s weather is a last stand of sorts. It is beauty at its most basic, which is fleeting. By noon tree limbs will be barren bark.

Meanwhile, I fill my eyes with the scene out the window. Today it’s winter; next week it will be spring.

Four Walls

Four Walls

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Cold rain, and plenty of it. Wind, too.  Even the hardiest walker would have found yesterday’s weather tough going.

Commuting by public transport, though, makes us all walkers, which means we have a taste of the weather, like it or not.

So I dodged puddles on the street and jumped over them to reach the curb. I stood shivering on the platform, waiting for a train.

 I dashed into buildings gratefully, shook off the umbrella, stamped the feet, brushed off the coat. It was too cold for a raincoat so the wool one was pressed into service.

And at the end of the day I marveled at the warmth and dryness of this house I sit in now. Four walls that, among other things, keep out the elements. And yesterday, that was a very good thing!

Monochromatic

Monochromatic

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More snow last night, a few inches, enough to coat the mud and the leaves, the daffodil and crocus shoots. Enough to make it clear that it’s still winter.

Temperature-wise there has been no doubt of late, with single digit wind chills. But palette is important, too, and today February looks the part.

We are back to a monochromatic world. Black trees, leaves, lamp posts and pickets. White everything else. It’s better this way, I think.

The Climate of Reading

The Climate of Reading

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The Wind is Not a River is not a book to read in the winter. When his plane is shot down, journalist John Easley bails out and lands on Attu, the westernmost of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands and the site of the only World War II battle fought on U.S. territory.

Easley has come to report on the war but instead finds himself in a damp, cold place known as “the birthplace of winds.” He survives by eating mussels and coaxing fire out of grass and driftwood. He wraps up in a parachute to sleep.  He is never really warm.

When I read this novel I find myself pulling up the covers or tightening my scarf. Such is the power of fiction to take us out of one place and plop us down in another.

But I must choose books more carefully. Read in the warm months, this book would be a cool breeze. Read in the winter, it’s yet another nail in the coffin of cold.

Sculptural Snow

Sculptural Snow

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A walk over the weekend took me past snow piled in fantastical shapes. Snow like the wind-scoured face of an ancient mountain. Snow like an architecturally inspried installation of an avant garde exhibition.

What snow we have left has blackened caps and sides. It has hardened into peaks and valleys. It is nothing like what fell here 17 days ago.

What’s left now are the remnants of plowed mountains, covered with exhaust and road soot. It’s snow as refuse, snow as sculpture.

Late Walk

Late Walk

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The snow didn’t just melt yesterday, it evaporated. It left us in a great sigh of fog and cloud. A late walk convinced me of this, put me in the midst and the mist of its vanishing.

Along the shoulder, snowbanks receded, and rivulets streamed across the pavement. The air was alternately cool and warm, pockets of moisture and of scent.

Car lights cast rainbows in the air. I kept my distance, knowing they couldn’t see me. But I marveled at the diffused light they cast, and used it to find my way.

In the west the clouds parted just enough to showcase the sunset, its pinks and violets a simmering, shimmering band of unexpected color.

Making it Official

Making it Official

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Yesterday morning the plows made it through, so four days of newspapers landed in the driveway with a thud.

We weren’t exactly information starved over the long weekend. I always enjoy the hyped-up local TV and radio news before, during and after a snowstorm. And there’s the Capital Weather Gang, my go-to website with more analytics and blizzard models than you’d ever want to know.

Still, it was a relief to get the print product, to see this recent meteorological event dubbed one “for the ages”. It was almost (not quite) as if seeing it in print meant it really, truly happened. At the very least it was verification and retrospection.

But, this being a lively and full house, the papers were soon scattered across the counter and coffee table. Drinks were set down on them, breadcrumbs shaken on them.  And more than anything else, they — their late arrival, the news they bore — became part of the memory of this moment.