Breaking through

I live for March!

Okay, maybe because it’s my birth month. Fifty-seven years ago today, I was born between two blizzards, so March is in my blood.

But “they” say that, in the arts, what makes a successful work is tension between opposing forces. That’s a perfect description of this crazy, mixed-up month.

Winter keeps trying to hang on; spring keeps trying to break through. Every day, in myriad ways, the conflict continues. Water breaking through ice. Plants breaking through frozen ground. Sun breaking through clouds.

Recent days have been classic: Sunny and in the forties with bluebird skies, then, rain, snow, ice, mud. Today we had squalls that made the world look like one of those snowglobes you shake at Christmas, followed by bright stabs of sun and biting winds, through which it kept snowing. Temps inched up to nip the bottom of the freezing mark but didn’t quite make it, though if you stood in a sheltered spot, you could take off your hat and coat.

One of my favorite sounds is the roar of meltwater cascading off the hills and filling the rivers, which then bludgeon the ice apart and flood their banks in a brown-green roiling torrent.

One of my favorite sights is the first redwing blackbird atop the apple tree, scouting for open water and ground, preceded or followed by flocks of other birds returning from the tropics or vacating their winter grounds. Yesterday we had at least a hundred redpolls swarm through, moving like a school of herring in waves and ripples. A few nights ago, I heard Canada geese honking their way back north out of sight above the clouds.

My favorite of all: the first daffodil poking through the mealy snow and rotted leaf litter. It was early this year, a special birthday gift.

But what makes the month really special is the equinox. It has its equivalent in the fall, but September lacks the conflict-tension of March. With rare exceptions, such as an early blizzard or a hurricane, the summer-to-autumn transition is slower, less dramatic, than the winter-to-spring transition. You can rely on the vernal equinox to be a busy time of contrasts and constant change. Gaining back light is more heartening than losing it, so coming out of winter is just plain more exciting than sinking into quietude. March is the birth of the new year, and birth is always messy and painful.

The date one is born is luck of the draw. I am so happy to have been born in March, which gives me a Happy New Year in so many ways.

Cold is beautiful

This is the time of year I dread most: a solid week of subzero temps; on a good day, a high in the single digits. This year, more so than others, a biting wind has come with it. All I want to do is crawl under the covers and sleep it away.

But of course, life goes on—as much indoors as possible! Even that’s a strain, though, with freezing pipes, firewood consumption higher in three days than otherwise for a month, and static electricity making the cat run away when you try to pet him, and your hair standing on end.

Looking out the window, however, makes all that go away for a moment.

This evening, I caught the most glorious sunset! Beyond the white stretches of snow bounded by gray and brown trees, peeking above them, the hills suddenly went roseate. Purple, mauve, and magenta, with the crystalline sky above forming a perfect pastel rainbow of violet, lilac, and pink, easing seamlessly into peach then baby blue, growing ever more richer and deeper blue as I looked up to an almost-full moon gleaming white like a high-beam headlight behind the black skeleton arms of near-view trees.

(That moon, in fact, tends to wake us up at 2:00 in the morning as it crosses the sky and suddenly beams into the bedroom. We don’t have curtains, so it’s quite a poke in the eye when you roll over!)

And then, the stars! OMG, you can see to the end of the universe. All that’s missing is an aurora borealis to add the final glory. I still dream about seeing one someday.

But color comes in other forms, at similarly surprising moments. Yesterday morning, while doing the dishes, I glanced out the window at the bird feeder and almost dropped a plate. Normally all we see this time of year are the black/white/gray/brown species; but there, on opposite sides of the feeder, were a brilliant red cardinal and an equally brilliant blue jay. In a second, they were gone.

That was payback for all those mornings I’ve donned six layers and trudged outside to refill the feeders. And the view out the curtainless windows is payback for the chill that comes through unblanketed glass.

An antidote to winter

For years I resisted getting an electric blanket. Not only because of Yankee stoicism, but also because of cost and a secret fear that the thing would set the bed on fire.

Those concerns eventually went away, and for 20 years now I’ve been enjoying the luxury of an always-warm sleep space. It’s proven to be a greater luxury than anticipated, for it adds, unexpectedly, a spiritual quality to every winter’s day.

No matter what’s going on, no matter how good or rotten a day has been; no matter how I feel, physically or emotionally, when I slip between the pre-warmed covers, I am transported to gratitude. All I can think is, “Ahhh . . . life is good.”

My last thoughts before sleep are how lucky I am. How safe and warm, how fed and loved. While outside the walls the world is frozen solid, and wild creatures—as well as millions of people—are struggling to survive and suffering for the effort, I am cocooned in security. My anxieties over money and world peace and climate change and career and relationships all disappear for a few blessed hours, merely from the simulation of crawling back into the womb.

Amazing, how therapeutic a simple electric device can be!

I therefore recommend that everyone who lives in a cold climate—or even just a seasonally chilly one—and who can pull the money together run out and get an electric blanket if they don’t already have one. This relatively small investment will have a huge beneficial return in peace of mind and ease of body. All winter, every winter, year after year.

Unexpected consequences

The log-out described in previous post is finally finished. Well, at least the tree-dropping part. There’s a whole lot left over that still needs attending to, both by them and by us.

Their part is finishing the cut: limbing, bucking, hauling, stumping, and, for the big tree in the yard, chipping. Whether this will be accomplished sooner rather than later remains to be seen, as we now have snow and ice on the ground.

Our part is cleaning up slash still in the way around the perimeter, filling in innumerable holes, removing or repairing items that got damaged by dropped trunks (i.e., my garden). This must wait until spring.

That leaves the pond. During the first phase, two trees were most safely dropped across the pond, which had a good ice cover. Those trunks were then dragged out and processed, leaving limbs, branches, and pine needles galore floating around amid and atop the now shattered ice.

A few days of wacky weather thawed things enough that we could launch the good-old aluminum Grumman canoe and extract debris before it either sank en masse to acidify the water or plug up the outflow during spring thaw. Armed with paddle and rake, we poked and pulled and dragged until the boat was so burdened that we literally couldn’t move! A stiff breeze didn’t help.

Oh, for somebody with a camera! We looked ludicrous stuck ten feet from shore, laughing hysterically, while mixed moisture spat down from a steely sky and limbs longer than the boat dragged their branches like sea anchors along both sides.

Musclepower (and lack of options) eventually hauled us to land. But before we could ease our frozen and strained muscles in a hot shower, we still had to dump the load above waterline and drag the canoe back to storage for the winter.

Within 24 hours, the pond had refrozen. Although we didn’t remove half the debris in there, it has now sunk out of sight. So all that effort was probably for nothing. We’ll know in April when winter’s grip lets go.

Weird winter

Most everyone in the country -- heck, most everyone in the world this year! -- will agree that it's been a funky season. Several funky seasons in a row, in fact.

And so it's been here, where this winter has been the weirdest one of the 14 we've so far experienced in Vermont. It's brought the least snow, not even accumulating 2 feet since October, versus the norm of 1-2 feet per month. Long strings of days above freezing, instead of the reverse. Short strings of subzero days instead of the usual week of same per month, December through March.

As people who heat with wood, we appreciate such a mild winter! So much easier to haul firewood in from the stack out back, and so much less needed to warm the house. The downside is:

Ice.

Weird winter weather has meant freeze/thaw/freeze/thaw, turning the dooryard into a skating rink and driveway into a luge run. These make simple tasks like bringing in the bird feeders at night, or walking out to the car, death-defying risks (never mind hauling wheelbarrows full of firewood!). I've only fallen once this season, though it did require a trip to the chiropractor to straighten out. In previous years, hubby and I have both taken falls that either created or solved chiropractic issues. It's amazing how exciting and dangerous living can sometimes be!

Thus the season has passed, to the point where we're suddenly on the cusp of spring. March, historically, is when winter gets its wackiest. The deepest snows have occurred in this month, along with the oddest mixes of weather. I recall one day when I passed through rain, sleet, snow, sunshine, wind, deep mud, and thunderstorm with hail and rainbow inside 20 minutes and 15 miles. This year, less dramatic -- but in 4 days we've had 10 inches of snow, followed by temps in the high 40s that melted away half of it, followed a hard freeze returning the yard to skating rink/luge run configuration, then rain, sleet, high winds, blinding sunshine, and clouds/fog, with single-digit temps forecast overnight and a bounce back to the 40s within 48 hours.

Meanwhile, the birds are starting to move and changing mix at the feeders. Woodpeckers, owls, and ravens have been doing the mating dance for weeks. First robins have arrived, looking very confused. A platoon of geese landed on the river not far from here, clearly resting from migration. And the sun, when it shines, is so strong that it's hard to believe the spring bulbs won't pop up tomorrow through the crust they've lain beneath for months.

What makes this all exciting is the crapshoot factor. Forget the weather forecast -- what arrives is almost always different from what's predicted, so that every day is an adventure. And only 16 more before it's officially Spring!

The switcheroo

12/10/11

The switcheroo


Twenty-four hours after my last post discussing season change, the season changed. Thump, just like that.

We're accustomed to early snows that don't amount to much and disappear quickly. This one was only 4-5 inches, but it was heavy and wet, and bowed over all the trees from the weight of white coating. We worried about power outages -- some leaves were still up, and this is the condition that snaps branches and karate-chops wires -- but nothing happened. What a relief! The longest power outage we've ever suffered was an October storm some years ago that left us juice-free for five days.

This time, it melted away within twenty-four hours.

Same thing happened a few days later. Another 4 inches of wet snow, no biggy for us but it walloped southern New England, which was still in full foliage. Tore down trees by the acre and left that heavily populated urban/suburban area out of power for a week or more! We felt for them, having recently endured the effects of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene. But our life went on as normal, for which we were grateful.

And then it melted off yet again, restoring clement conditions that allowed a final race against the calendar to get outdoor work done before getting snowed in for good. That finally happened with an 8-inch snow dump this week -- again, wet and heavy -- but this time not melting off. Sun came back strong but temperatures didn't follow. What's underneath the snow now will stay there until April. Or May . . . however long it lasts.

I suppose that's appropriate, given that we're now into December. It's rare to go snow-free this late into the year. We're now in full heating season and the longest hours of darkness, wearing parkas and boots and hats and gloves, mounting snow tires, scraping off cars.

It's the time of year when I begin my countdown. Only eleven more days 'til solstice, when the sun resumes its northward path and light starts returning to the land.

Can't wait!

Down to brown

Something that surprises me every year, no matter how often I experience it, is the speed of the season change. You see and feel it coming . . . you watch for it, record the signs . . . but then overnight the switch occurs, and you’ve jumped from summer to fall. Or fall to winter and so forth, as the case may be.

It just happened this week, the flip from foliage to stick season. The foliage change came late this year, and peak was short. A few days of wind and rain finished it off, and the cold rolled in. But there’s a lingering blend of colors that belies the seeming onset of winter. Grass is still green -- bright emerald in some places -- while the fields have turned beige and mustard, and the late-dropping trees glow with every variation between gold and brown.

Beeches, oaks, and birches paint the landscape around the naked trunks of maple, ash, and others. At the tippy top of the canopy, vivid yellows, almost lemon, stand out like blonde afro hairdos above the russets, coppers, ochres, siennas, and terra-cottas of the mid-story hardwoods. The understory features maroons and clarets and burgundies of burning-bush and sumac. All these are set against the somber purples and grays of the hills patched with dark evergreens, interrupted in sharp slashes, like exclamation points, by the bright amber larches.

Such colors become almost neon on the gloomy days of hanging moisture, then gain a celestial dazzle when the sun breaks through in columnar beams. The nice thing is, even when the last of the yellow leaves finally fall and the grasses wither, the midstory browns hang on, often through spring. This gives the landscape color and texture even during winter’s starkest months.

It all happens in reverse at the other end of the calendar. Then the bleakness suddenly gets fuzzy with incipient color, and next thing you know, the world is green and vibrant again.

A favorite seasonal poem

I’m not a big poetry fan, but there are a few simple, lovely poems I learned when young that have stayed with me. This is one of them. Was reminded of it this morning when I heard Canada geese gathering overhead.

Enjoy.

**************************

Something told the wild geese

It was time to go.

Though the fields lay golden

Something whispered, "Snow."

Leaves were green and stirring,

Berries luster-glossed,

But beneath warm feathers

Something cautioned, "Frost."

All the sagging orchards

Steamed with amber spice,

But each wild breast stiffened

At remembered ice.

Something told the wild geese

It was time to fly.

Summer sun was on their wings,

Winter in their cry.

--Rachel Field

“Something Told the Wild Geese”

The archaeology of snow

When the land has been covered by deep snow for one-third of the year, you start to forget what lies underneath. Reminders emerge during this transition season, when winter begins decaying under the strong sun that holds temperatures above freezing for a few hours, then a few days, finally evaporating the snowpack an inch -- or a foot -- at a time.

And so the discoveries begin. Oh my, there's the pile of lumber we ripped out of the house during remodeling, and didn't have time to de-nail and stack under cover before the snow came! And there's the jumbled stack of pine boughs, hastily picked up during a blowdown between big snow dumps #1 and #2.

Why, there's the corner of a big planter I shoved clear of the anticipated plow path, now protruding from the pushed pile that just days ago was impenetrable to shovels and ice picks, and long since immovable by the plow.

Oh wow, that lump is actually a parked car! And here's the layer of turds that accumulated when the turkey flock came through a month ago, along with a layer of saturated niger seed below the finch feeder. Over there, summer tires we didn't get stowed in time after rushing to mount snow tires on the cars.

Around the countryside, white depressions are turning milky blue as softening ice defines ponds, and runoff channels are carving through to the snow surface, churning and brown and filling the air with damp noise.

Now, and for days or weeks onward, snow-and-ice underfoot changes to ice-and-mud and back again, making for challenging walking and sometimes driving. The infamous "mud season" turns frost-heaved roads into quagmires that, instead of busting vehicle suspensions, suck vehicles down to their belly pans to the point they can't move.

Spring may be sloppy, but the excitement of rediscovery cancels out the hassle. We're all crossing our fingers against the chance of a late-season blizzard -- the biggest snow we've ever experienced occurred the last week of March some years ago, burying us in 5+ feet (on top of 3+ already on the ground) in 10 days.

And yet: When it finally went, it happened in less than a week. Through melting, sublimation, rain, and fog, winter's snow gives way in a wondrous hurry when Nature signals "It's time." Already, the bird population is changing, and I can almost hear bulbs stirring below ground. A week from now, the landscape is certain to look completely different. Will it be buried beneath a fresh white blanket? Or be a green-and-brown mess with shoots poking through?

Break-up

This afternoon we saw the coolest thing. We live near a river that runs alongside the main road then turns 90 degrees to plunge down a steep gorge, over which hangs a suspension footbridge on the Appalachian Trail and Long Trail where they run jointly throughVermont.

In previous years, during spring thaw, we’ve visited this site and seen massive ice jumbles at the turn before the bridge, and wished we could see the power that creates it.

Today we finally did! Conditions have been right -- we’ve been scoping the river for days -- and this morning we went down to check progress. No, not ready yet, but break-up felt imminent. We decided to return after lunch.

At that point we donned our hardiest weather gear and went out into the rain. Temperatures were falling through the 30s. Crossing the bridge out of our village, we saw that we were too late: What had been an ice sheet with a channel snaking through it was now a bank-to-bank raging brown torrent. Damn!

Yet we continued the few miles to the gorge, thinking the spectacle would be worth it. En route, when the river came back into view, we noticed it was still iced over. Wait a minute -- we weren’t too late after all -- rather, we were running just ahead of the flood. Yes!

Within ten minutes, we were in position at the suspension bridge. Local people began arriving, saying their friends who live alongside the river had phoned. “It just passed the Ford dealership!” “It’s at the second Cuttingsville bridge!” And about 15 minutes later, a five-foot wall of ice-choked water roared into view and swung around the corner, packing the cove solid within seconds as it decimated the ice before us then raced under the bridge, filling the gorge to river height. The roar was so loud, punctuated by clunks, cracks, and rumbles, that we had to shout to hear each other standing shoulder to shoulder.

It reminded me of pyroclastic flows from volcanoes, and made us understand how people can be overtaken by flash floods and mudslides. For long minutes after the wall swept through, the river hurled ice floes into the air and busted them apart against boulders. Trees tore by like matchsticks. Gradually the ice chunks became smaller, the water browner, and its level sank back to seasonal norm, leaving scars and ice packs against and above the banks. On the drive home, we saw floes up to the shoulder of the roadway.

From door to door we spent a chilly and soggy hour. Arrived home just as the precipitation turned to freezing rain. Hubby got pictures plus a mini-movie, so we can relive the excitement and share with friends and family. It was a wonderful, surprising way to spend a winter afternoon!

Winter blue

Whenever I'm overtaken by the winter blues, I turn my attention to blue -- my favorite color, which appears in unique shades only during the winter and gives my heart a lift.

The most magically beautiful blue: Full moon on snow. This is like a bright, sunny day with an indigo filter over it, etching long, sharp shadows and crisp details into a blue-and-white world.

Its opposite: The day after a fresh snowfall. The sky, as my spouse calls it, is "severe clear," giving sheets of azure above sheets of dazzling white.

In between: Pastel tints of bluish lavender outlining the contours of the land beneath the snow and crossing it with shadows. Reflected above in cloud striations that promise more snow to come.

Then there's ice: Frozen waterfalls down escarpments, where groundwater is captured in the act of succumbing to gravity, its minerals glowing teal through silvery masses.

Local people harness the same flow into free-form ice sculptures by sticking a hose into a spring and letting its pressure spray the surrounding landscape. These accumulate into huge, sea-blue mounds that can last until May! I guess that's their way of dealing with winter blues.

Carolyn Haley

Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us

Silent night

Two aspects of living in the rural north give special poignancy to the winter holidays.

(1) Silence.
On the rare occasions when we have big snow -- just snow, no wind or sleet or any other variations of winter storm -- the world is embraced in a white velvet silence. It's a true silence, an utter silence; the only sounds come from your own clothes when you move. The surface of the world is smoothed into innocent beauty while life sleeps beneath. We get the silence for a few minutes or hours a year, maybe once every several years; two years ago, it came as a gift on the winter solstice.

(2) Darkness.
No streetlights. No neighbor's porch lights. Mostly, no headlights except your own, winding along the roads back from town. Then, suddenly, a star of Bethlehem floating in the blackness! Oh, it's somebody's holiday lights on a barn across the valley. Around a curve, a perfect Christmas tree illuminated in red, green, and white. Or perhaps a blue one. Then darkness. Around another bend, a deciduous tree's bare branches outlined in gold. Another mile of darkness, until the world leaps into blinding, blinking glow from an extravaganza of Santas and reindeers and trees and stars and snowmen and sleighs, all packed into somebody's tiny yard and so fully lit that you can almost hear the electric meter spinning. Then, back into darkness -- the opposite of snowfall, a rich, deep, inky blue that showcases every star in the heavens.

With this combination, it's hard to resist singing, "Silent night, holy night / All is calm, all is bright . . ."

Happy holidays!

Carolyn Haley

Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us

Mammals R Us

This time of year, I become acutely conscious of being a diurnal mammal. As winter descends, so do my energy and curiosity, so that all I want to do is eat large amounts of fatty foods and sleep. My cats do basically that, and I envy them the luxury. The rest of the year, they want to be outside all the time; now, they only bestir themselves for a brief change of scenery or a trip to the outdoor restroom. I content myself with looking out the windows and using indoor plumbing.

The happiest moment of every day is when I crawl beneath the electric blanket. The unhappiest moment of every day is when I wake up in the morning and it's still dark.

Some lucky critters get to bury themselves in the mud or a den, or migrate, or in other ways escape the season. The unlucky ones are out still there rooting desperately for food and shelter. I often wonder how our forebears endured life without houses and furnaces and electric blankets and supermarket-bought food stored in refrigerators, with electric lights and entertainment to beat back the darkness while wearing warm, comfy clothes and driving environmentally sealed cars. How brutal life must have been in earlier ages! How grateful I am to never know!

Just as often, I think about the advantage of this climate. Sure, winter is a drag, but it brings important pluses. In our neck of the woods, we don't have to worry about region-demolishing catastrophes such as hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods, mudslides, and wildfires. I'll gladly take a few months of winter for all my life to avoid experiencing any one of those, even once! Likewise, having 3-4 months of deep freeze manages insect pests in a way that spares us from plagues in garden and body, as can happen in warmer regions.

So I'll resist that primeval urge to hibernate and hang on through another winter. Spring, like a rainbow after a storm, arrives at the end. Which is worth many months of cold and darkness.

The annual giving of thanks

Every year at this time, people across America ritually gather to give thanks for what they have. I try to do the same thing mentally every day, counting my blessings -- difficult to do when times are tough, but always worth the effort because it revives appreciation of life and all that is good therein.

My personal thanksgiving ritual occurs at a different time of year. I wrote about it in the introduction to my book, Open Your Heart with Gardens:

"Each year, it happens afresh:

"After months of brown and gray and white . . . cold and hard and dark . . . the day comes when I step outside and behold a tip of green protruding from the ground.

"The first daffodil!

"The sight of it drops me to my knees, mentally chanting, Thankyouthankyouthankyou! Then I leap up into The Happy Dance because there at my feet lies proof that the world has kept turning, the invisible forces of the universe have kept churning, and Mother Nature has again fulfilled her promise despite everything I doubted and feared.

"Thankyouthankyouthankyou!"

No daffodils now, but the promise of rebirth associated with them is what I most give thanks for as the year draws down and cold and darkness pervade.

Carolyn Haley

Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us

Signs of spring

As the calendar progresses toward the vernal equinox, our landscape remains buried under two feet of snow and ice. But signs of spring are everywhere.

* We can now see out the windows at suppertime.

* Seed consumption at the bird feeders has dropped significantly.

* The cats want to go outside again.

* Everybody in the household (human and quadruped) has started shedding.

* Maple sugaring has begun.

Unlike previous years at this time, the forecast is for a long stretch of sunny weather with moderate temps. I'm hoping we get lucky and just melt into spring without further drama.

But even if a classic March blizzard comes through, those other signs of spring make it clear that the season has turned and the worst is over. Hooray!

Carolyn Haley

Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com
Editing Business: DocuMania (www.documania.us)

Wacky weather

The big event this week was weather. It's been a big event all over the country (and the world) this year; our turn came with a bizarre and vigorous, multi-day storm that first dumped 2+ feet of snow, then 3 inches of rain, accompanied by big winds and followed by several days in a row of 1-3 inches of snow layered on daily, with a hiatus of sun, melting temps, and a gorgeous full moon squeezed in between.

For frosting on the cake, the first round included a stick storm -- big roof-denting pine limbs raining down on the house and yard. Thankfully, my spouse was on the ball and moved all the vehicles out of range before things got serious, sparing us a week on the phone making insurance claims. Luck took care of the rest. An impressive pile of thumpers fell around or between things, or just missed by inches. All we have to deal with this time is a very messy yard.

Less than a week ago I was standing in that yard feeling spring in the air and watching the ground start to emerge. But I've lived here long enough to know . . . it was only mid-February. Historically, this area gets the bulk of its snow in March. Way too soon to hope for deliverance. And, sure enough, Mother Nature proved me right.

Last year we didn't get the late snows. That's the exception, not the rule. Our worst snow, in fact, occurred the last week of March some years ago: 5 feet in 10 days, on top of 2-3 feet already on the ground. We snowshoed over cars without knowing they were there.

What's more amazing is how fast the snow disappears once the season decides to turn. And that day is coming soon. Only 4 weeks left until official Spring; within a week of that, daffodils will be poking through and the woodcock will arrive.

I can't wait!

Carolyn Haley

Author: The Mobius Striptease (e-novel, Club Lighthouse Publishing)
Open Your Heart with Gardens (nonfiction, DreamTime Publishing)
First-year blog archives at www.dreamtimepublishing.com