"A Winter Morning"

 This morning is quite different than from the day eight days ago when I awoke to the first snowstorm of the year and was inspired to write this short essay.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“A Winter Morning”

January 24, 2024

 

“You can’t get too much winter in the winter.”

                                                                                                                                Robert Frost (1874-1963)

                                                                                                                                “Snow”

                                                                                                                                Mountain Interval, 1916

 

For a New Englander born and raised, Robert Frost’s words ring true. Summer witnesses the smell of fresh flowers, soft breezes and warm temperatures, whose pleasures are enhanced because of winter’s snow, ice, and cold. We are reminded of how changing seasons reflect life’s journey, from spring’s birth through summer’s growth, to fall’s harvest and winters denouement – from nativity to death and resurrection. Or, as Shakespeare put it, through the voice of the ill-fated Gloucester, in Henry VI, Part 2:

 

“And after summer evermore succeeds

Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold:

So cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.”

 

As I roll out of bed – figuratively, not literately – on this morning following winter’s first storm, visions of past winter’s mornings dance through my head: as a child, the prospect of school closure; as a teenager, the anticipation of training with my school’s ski team; as a householder, the chore of shoveling the front steps; as a city-dweller, the necessity of trudging through snow-laden streets to my office.

 

But now in retirement my obligations are few, and I appreciate nature’s bounty. There are few scenes so beautiful as snow falling on a winter’s morning, especially when one knows that he does not have to leave his cozy and well-provisioned apartment. There are books, the internet, and a television that can transport me to distant places and faraway times. There is a fireplace – sadly, electric, but a fireplace just the same – to warm the soul and the room.

 

Winter is a special time, something recognized by poets and artists: “In winter I get up at night/ And dress by yellow candlelight,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in his 1885 collection, A Child’s Garden of Verses. Or Christina Rossetti’s 1872 poem “In the Bleak Midwinter,” which begins, “In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan/ Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone.” Visual artists have long used winter scenes to capture and express feelings. In our apartment hang many such paintings, including a 2014 oil by Utah’s Warren Neary, “Winter Solstice.” It shows cattle on a cold snowy morning, with a hint of the rising sun through a snow-laden sky, outside a barn from whose windows warm lights dimly glow.

 

Even with the cold and the ice, we should not rush the days away. Each is special, as are the changing seasons. Winter is, after all, a harbinger of spring.  Hibernating animals, from bears and hedgehogs to turtles and snails, now in mid-slumber, will soon leave their nests as warm days restore the earth. The early 20^thCentury poet Annette Wynne who specialized in children’s poetry wrote: “One, two, winter’s through/ Three, four, spring’s at the door.”

 

But for now, I look through frosty windows at the new-fallen snow and smile.