In this place, waves are perhaps associated less with water than with movement; not a noun, but a mode and manner of action. It’s natural; we have relatively few watersheds here, particularly lakes or other standing bodies where the winds can create waves that ebb and flow like an ocean tide.
Here, it is the storms themselves that come in waves, even in winter.
In the past, such patterns were less common at this time of year, but now, even winter weather assumes the form and shape of monsoonal rhythms. In summer, what is traditionally our rainy season, the storms build up by midday, and move in over the course of the afternoon in a series of bursts, each its own distinct event despite being part of a larger matrix of weather and contextual climate. It’s rather like the movement of a massive herd of spirit buffalo, or perhaps a flock of thunderbirds: There will always be a few large groups that comprise the majority, in number or mass, interspersed with empty space punctuated by smaller groupings and stragglers in ones and twos.
But our snowstorms used to be more ordinary. A few flurries as the storm gathers steam, eventually reaching critical mass in the form of a fast-moving wall of white, then slowing and finally stopping overhead — for a few hours, overnight, several days on end.These were the storms that deposited our winter precipitation in feet, not inches; a full three feet of snow from a single storm was not uncommon.
Now, though, the systems are less cohesive, more independent and capricious. In that, they seem a metaphor for our wider world, unsettled in the extreme, where the norm is now disruption and notions of community, much less solidarity, have been reduced to slogans with no substance. It’s fitting, given that it is our collective selfishness that has brought the weather to such a pass.
And so it is that this winter, while we have been granted the snow so long absent, our storms come in the volatile bursts more associated with the summer, and with as much variation in actual precipitation, too. Monsoonal patterns, in this place, can deliver flooding rains of deadly force and volume, but they can just as easily decline to drop much at all, their sound and fury signifying no more than a sprinkle here or there for a minute or less. The same is now true of the snow, and we are in the middle of it now: wave after wave of small storms, some expected to deliver a dusting, others to deposit greater depths.
And today, we are forced to ride the waves of winter, traveling abroad for urgent reasons amid formal storm warnings and a forbidding forecast. It’s rather like riding the waves of circumstance, hoping for the ease and safety of a clear path, praying that the swells of fortune will not swamp our progress or dash us on the rocks. It’s a daunting proposition, and so we put our faith in the patterns of the waves, a pattern that stood us in good stead in similar circumstances fewer than two weeks ago.
Wings captured the photo above a year ago, at a time when the pond was remarkably and unseasonally full. We had had no precipitation to speak of, no new water flowing on. But late the year before, others routed the water downstream where a certain portion of it passed naturally into our ditches, and thus into the pond, where it froze solid in December. By February of last year, the season had warmed so significantly that the feet of ice that had expanded over its banks in bubbles and bursts had thawed almost entirely, leaving only a thin rime along the edges. The winds were strong enough to whip its surface into a uniform parade of waves making steady progress in gaining the pond’s edge. Above them, the willow branches betrayed the season’s true identity, still the electric gold associated with winter rather than the more subdued browns and eventual greens of spring — these hanging low, yet still lucky enough to be lifted on the winds just above the ice-cold surface.
And perhaps, at this late stage of the season, that is the best we can hope for: to let ourselves be blown along above the surface when we can avoid the weather; to ride the waves when we cannot. We are on winter’s downward trajectory now, moving fast and picking up speed.
The trick is to make it to spring intact.
~ Aji
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