Dreaded Winter
Winter, the season of discontent. There is a reason that individuals such as myself despise this season of the white cold; it is because it holds no beauty. There are only stark trees, denuded of their lush growth, and an endless ocean of white. It’s monotonous and amounts to sensory deprevation. Lack of sunlight only heightens the sour moods we are in and makes us depressed, or what they used to call, “winter madness” all the more dangerous.
The air is dry and cold, but more than that; it has no odor, no smell. Unlike the other three seasons, winter has no smell of it’s own. The dry, harsh air carries with it no memory, no sensory impact to stir our senses and give us something to hold onto until a better spring comes. There is only the white snow, dead air, and boredom. When I look out my window (for it is too cold to go outside) I see no birds or animals. There isn’t a lick of life to be seen or felt and it makes us feel more alone then we’ve felt and that scares us on a level that is prehistoric. We feared this season many centuries ago, and with good reason; so many of us failed to survive it due to disease, madness, starvation, or lack of heat.
There aren’t even decent sunsets to break the harsh bleakness of the season. There is only overcast skies that herald more snow, hard winds with their odorless blasts, and the stark skeletons of the trees once lush with growth but now dead, wrapped in comatose slumber.
We are urged by counsellors and other professionals to get out of the house more. I’m always tempted to ask them where. Where do we go ? Encased in our cold homes (with lowered thermostat, lest the gas company fleece us) we go outside in frigid air to an icebox of a vehicle that takes forever to warm up. We drive to some destination and are loathe to leave our warm little life pod. We stiffen and throw open the car door and are assaulted by the cold of Noontime, which is, with wind, hovering around the zero mark. The relaxation we had on the warm drive is jerked from our minds as the cold slices through our parka like a riven nail.
As we walk the distance to the store/mall/movie, we freeze and tense. Gaining the safety of our destination, we gradually warm and relax. It is like a battle - advance and withdraw. There is no therapeautic value to going out, as there is no constancy.
One can only escape for a little while and the enjoyment is forced. For in the back of our minds we know that we have to brave the knife-edge of Old Man Winter all too soon as we trek back to our cars.
Personally I believe we should abandon the northern states and just leave them to the animals and other indigent life, and move to less harsh areas. Spring is filled with change for our newly awakened senses. There is the melting snow that brings out the smell of wet from the leaves that weren’t raked from last Fall. Our footsteps have the squish of the softened ground, and the squirrels scamper for food once more. We open like flowers to the sun, stretching our limbs as we tilt our heads back to feel the sun upon our upturned faces, the inside of our eyelids glow a warm orange-red. The breeze is fresh and new, alive with the promise of a better season to come.
Ah, but Summer is the finest of all. The opposite of winter in all respects, we are agape with wonder at the fullness of Mother Earth. The grass is a verdant green, so lush that we walk on it with bare feet, and feel the warmth of fertile ground. The smell of leaves, pungent as rosemary tickle our noses and we laugh. Children laugh and play amidst the lawns freshly mowed and smelling of timelessness, and in our adult minds we are there with them, throwing baseballs or water balloons. We can visit with our neighbors as they water the lawn or ready the barbeque, and we come away from the experience a better and more rounded person then we were moments before.
Then there is the pleasure of walking the neighborhood at night. The stars wink down at you in their cryptic morse, the wind comes up and rustles the leaves of the trees, asleep in the absence of sun, and if you listen closely a secret language insinuates itself into your ear. The whisper of a leaf or sand being blown across the asphalt titilates you. Somewhere lying in his kennel, the dogs claws turn silver in the moonlight as they twitch in dreams. There is magic in Summer.
And that’s why I hate winter.
