We have sudden onset acute winter syndrome. One day it was balmy and late fall-like, and the next it was Christmas already, with a solid blanket of snow and temps down to the minus teens ℉ (that’s -25 or so on the Celsius scale for you Fahrenheit-challenged folks). Meanwhile, we who had been lulled into doing a really really, really, thorough job on our chores ended up scrambling like mad to keep the fingers of cold from snaking into the house and grabbing at our feet and to get all the wood stacked in all the right places. Small complicating factor being that our largest bedroom currently doesn’t have a ceiling. But as of today it has insulation to cover about 65% of the room. You take what you can get. It seems like every year there’s more to do to get ready for winter. 

Even though winter is never like it used to be. When I was four, Holland saw record cold and snow not equalled since, and you might say not equalled before, either: it was by some measures the coldest winter since 1789, the winter that according to some historians created the impetus for the French Revolution, as grain got expensive and hence bread also. Temperature observation was an important preoccupation of humanist/scientists in the eighteenth century. The earliest daily continuous records that have survived are those of Nicolaas Kruik of Delft in 1705, some twenty years before Fahrenheit proposed the standardized temperature scale he developed in The Hague and used in his wildly popular mercury thermometers— which is how it became widely adopted for a couple of hundred years. By the epic winter of 1962-3, however, Holland measured on the metric-based Celsius scale. (Today the United States is one of five countries in the world to stick with Gabriel Fahrenheit.)

That winter created some of my first coherent memories. I can still see feel and see the experience of walking between walls of snow piled so high it felt like a tunnel. It takes being four, of course; my mother had to lift me across the piles at the corner. On a Sunday at the beach, along with everyone else in town, we gawked at broken ice piled as high as a house in my short person memory, like in photographs of Antarctica. In an unheard-of move, my grandfather got a bicycle shop to sell him a sled for me on a Sunday. The highlight of my winter was getting towed on my sled by my uncle in his Peugeot on the a lake. Driving onto the ice! People were giddy with excitement: not only was driving new for most, this kind of ice was unheard-of. In a seaside city of a mere couple of inches now and then, it would be the only time for that particular kind of magic.

I have waited for another winter like it ever since. But moving to Plainfield brought winters with cold and snow on the fantastic scale I remembered. It started with a historic winter in which the temps dipped deeply every night. It got so cold the water supply to my not-so-winterized cabin froze solidly underground on January 19, not to defrost until April 25. Twenty-three below, twenty-six below. I was living on my own for the first time and I had the winter adventure I’d looked for right by the tail. Hauling water, stuffing newspapers into cracks, keeping my feet off the floor. Night after night after night, feeding the wood stove offered a view of the coldest, twinkliest snow I had ever seen. New magic.

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Winter is never like it used to be, and most winters are dominated by layers of ice that will drive the hardiest most phlegmatic Yankee to cursing… But the magic is here in spades this year. Snow came and with it a shock of recognition: I remember this! Snow without a maddening layer of ice below it, gorgeous woods inviting you to lie down for a while, frozen tundra horizontal blowing snow at twilight, enough frost to make you scurry around making sure the pipes don’t freeze, enough frost to slow down some of the insect hordes threatening our forests. Skiing and snowshoeing; dogs going nuts diving in and out of snow banks; chopping kindling and hauling wood; Christmas table cloths frozen stiff and flapping wildly on the line; endless donning and doffing of layers of coats, hats and gloves. And above all, ice and snow crystals in the morning sun; the blue of twilight; the twinkling of the moon in a million reflections on a still, still night when small creatures scurry around under a thick blanket of frozen snow. 

Bundle up, it’s -12, cold on any scale. Wishing everyone a happy and warm 2018. 

PS — Most of these images may be ordered as cards or prints. If there’s no “SW” number, ask.

Gaudy Bauble — card by AgathaO

Snow Ghosts — card by AgathaO

Winter blooms: rare but beauteous

Reflections with snow

Snow advancing on ice by AgathaO

Winter Stream — card by AgathaO

Ice feathers– Card by AgathaO

Winter Scene

Beech Droplet may be ordered as a card– put the link and the title in the notes

Using Nature’s gifts — card by AgathaO

Stilled Motion

Laundry arrested in mid-flutter — click to shop