The first days of December, and already we are caught firmly in winter’s web.
This is no bad thing. It simply feels a bit early, after so many years of unseasonal warmth and drought. Indeed, today the mercury is rising far above the highs of recent days, already into the mid-forties. The air is clean and clear, sky an impossible blue and earth still an improbably pure white, and the willow branches have already made their annual turn to a bare and shimmering gold.
This has been a difficult year. After a hard early start, we had hoped that the days would settle into an simpler, more navigable groove, but through November’s very end, it was not to be. And then yesterday, as the dawn rose upon new calendar month, the last of year and already blanketed in snow, it felt as though something had at last turned over. Our whole small world here seemed fresh and new and open to every possibility.
Such are the gifts of winter.
It requires, of course, a certain mindset, a worldview unbothered by cold or the inconveniences of weather. And winter is indeed a web, one that snares the unwary and unprepared as surely as it embraces the spirits of those who welcome its arrival. Fortunately for us, we fall into the latter camp; aging bones and joints notwithstanding, we are both far more happily at home in the snow than in the extreme heat of summer.
Winter brings other gifts, as well: the chickadees flitting back and forth between feeder and aspen outside the window; the cold-weather raptors soaring on the hunt; perhaps an occasional visitation from the elk. And the trees, having shed their green robes entirely now, seem instead somehow to grow more fully into themselves, branches strong and bare and reaching out to embrace the chill air and icy world around them. The aspens turn silver; the maples, copper. And for the willows, their branches become pure gold.
A matrix of in the shades of precious metals: lines and shadows, woven webs. These are gifts beyond price.
I remember, not so many years ago, when a few inches of snow upon the land was a constant, from Thanksgiving or so until roughly April. We feared those days were past, that we had exceeded the tipping point already, placing our winters entirely beyond hope of recovery. It’s a relief to know that we were wrong, at least for the moment, and that alone is a gift, as well. It does not make us complacent — indeed, we paid close enough attention to the signs all year to allow ourselves to hope, and we prepared accordingly, stockpiling firewood as early as spring. But now that the season is here, it allows to enjoy it, to appreciate and honor it for the beauty that it offers and the blessings that it provides.
Today, much of the world returns to work after a long holiday weekend. Blue skies and warmer winds and the gold lacework of the willows notwithstanding, our work continues too. But we have the gift, the luxury, of doing the work safe in the shimmering strands of winter’s web.
~ Aji
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