Nine degrees, with a wind chill of three. And that’s far warmer than originally forecast.
The sun is up, just cresting the ridgeline of the south slope. The clouds have all vanished, leaving a vast expanse of clear pale turquoise in their wake. And a dusting of snow covers the earth, ashimmer like a blanket beaded with diamonds. One glossy crow has won the top of the suet block, while the rest of his clan mill around on the snow beneath, a perfect black/white contrast for such an elemental morning.
That is the gift that winter gives us in exchange for driving out the warmth: Sun and season engage in a conspiracy of light.
The birds handle this kind of cold so much better than we humans do. And I don’t mean just the still and silent tin birds like the one above, although this one has weathered a dozen winters thus far and is well into its thirteenth. But even the more fragile birds, those that live and breathe and even fly, they thrive in this weather. Their bodies are created — one might say engineered — for it.
It’s humbling to look out upon the frozen land and see creatures tiny enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand with room left over, busy at work and play and utterly unbothered by the Arctic temperatures. It’s a reminder that all of our benchmarks for “worth” are false, artificial. mere constructs of our own selfish and discriminatory tendencies. Size determines neither strength nor power; neither does flashiness of dress nor loudness of voice. We all survive in our own individual ways, evolving and adapting as necessary, and we all have our own gifts to bring to the fight.
For humans, the gift of coping with bitter cold unaided is not among them.
As I write, the crows have ceded space to their smaller cousins, the magpies. Their iridescent black bands, dark shawls and skirts around crisp white shirts, glow blue and green in the light of the fully risen sun. They are hard at work, as always, collecting seeds and suet and marrow from stray dog bones and whatever else may be available to sustain their clan through the long cold months. The magpies are an example for us in other ways: They are perhaps the hardest-working creatures here, and the most community-minded, too. They never stop, never give up; they protect their own in widely-extended family units; they are willing to stand up on behalf of others more distantly related, harrying Coyote until he returns to the back country, preferably without a new avian meal.
This is their land, and every season is theirs; they have no need to migrate. They know winter well, and have made a friend of it.
As the sun rises well above the ridgeline, one stray cloud formed from the snow blowing off the southern edge of the peak drifts slowly before it. The light is still impossibly clear, save for one high gray band limned on the topline in pure molten silver. The temperature has risen a scant two degrees beneath Father Sun’s gaze, but the wind has ceased, at least for the moment.
Lacking the fierce wind chill of moments ago, eleven degrees is its own kind of gift.
Our task today will be to come to terms with the cold, to meet winter as she is and learn to thrive in it. The wild birds show us a way; the light rewards us for the work.
~ Aji
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