More photography here.
Back before winter melted into an unseasonably warm February, we got to enjoy some idyllic snowfall:
A boy beholding his world:
A foggy commute:
Shadows and hallways:
Laying down in the backyard with the 5 year old let us spot this view of a fading contrail:
More photography here and on my Instagram.
A sunbeamed leaf as seen through our car windshield:
The yin and yang of a backyard bonfire remnant:
At work in his corner office:
Cloudy with a chance of a refill:
The bubbles are back, and they’re multiplying:
Mr. 3 Year Old is eager to shovel at the slightest dusting so we’re out there even while it’s still snowing. This results in what I call snombré (snow + ombré), where the freshly shoveled blends smoothly into the re-covered areas:
More photography here and on my Instagram.
This picture barely captures how cool the evening light was through these clouds at my local strip mall:
Remnants of winter:
Black Play-Doh + white Play-Doh = accidentally awesome marbled design:
“Aphyllous trees beneath cirrocumulus clouds” sounds like a line from “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” but is really just what I caught here at our park:
Just doing domino runs with Jenga blocks with the 2 year old:
On the move in Pure Michigan:
Liked the colors and lines here:
Shout-out to the kids playing pickup baseball at the park who probably have never seen The Sandlot but nevertheless showed why it’s such a timeless classic:
As above…
…snow below:
Before the recent heat wave started melting the abundant snow, I was able to enjoy a moment in the snowfall with Mr. Two Year Old, which is where I grabbed the clips above. I’m so glad he loved it as much as I did.
Anytime I’m able to dwell in idyllic winter weather I think of Adam Gopnik’s Winter: Five Windows on the Season, which I read back in 2014. I’m always on the lookout for quotes and books that capture the alluring spirit of winter and why I love it so much, and that book definitely delivered.
But I realized I hadn’t actually taken any notes from it, so I did something I rarely do: I reread a book. Admittedly it was less a full reread and more a skimming for the best quotes, but I’m glad I did because there was lots I failed to note and appreciate the first time.
I included my favorite quotes below, but before that I also want to highlight an excerpt from a poem Gopnik himself quotes—1794’s “The Winter Evening” by English poet William Cowper:
Oh Winter! ruler of th’ inverted year,
Thy scatter’d hair with sleet like ashes fill’d,
Thy breath congeal’d upon thy lips, thy cheeks
Fring’d with a beard made white with other snows
Than those of age; thy forehead wrapt in clouds,
A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne
A sliding car, indebted to no wheels,
But urg’d by storms along its slipp’ry way;
I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem’st,
And dreaded as thou art! …
I crown thee King of intimate delights,
Fire-side enjoyments, home-born happiness,
And all the comforts that the lowly roof
Of undisturb’d retirement, and the hours
Of long uninterrupted evening, know.
More photography here and on my Instagram.
A dusting on the pier at our local park:
Just following in Little Man’s footsteps:
This is either a failed photo or the perfect encapsulation of Christmas morning with a toddler:
Liked the colors and light in our front bushes (which still have Christmas lights on them) while taking out the trash early in the morning after a big snow:
From the same early morning, the edge of the driveway’s snow blower path was very satisfying to behold:
One day while working from home I saw Almost 2 Years Old and my wife rolling around the snow in the backyard:
More photography here and on my Instagram.
Watching this little wanderer discover the wilds of Pure Michigan™:
Caught some nice evening light in our local playground’s jungle gym:
Technically this will be Mr. 22 Month Old’s third winter (he was born during a blizzard), but the first he remembers and appreciates. Hence his major surprise and excitement when waking up to the first snow of the season:
And finally getting to use his shovel:
More photography here. And on my Instagram.
Pretty cool frost patterns on my car window (I call this one “Frozen Fractals All Around”):
A few shots of my building’s backyard in the snow:
Scraping off the car one morning, the snow shavings fell in a pattern that encircled the car. They contrasted well with the dark asphalt, and sorta looked like the Milky Way:
And a bonus GIF from when I was looking through microfilm at work for a patron. The zooming effect made it look like those whirling newspaper montages in old movies:
Edwin Way Teale, Wandering Through Winter:
Winter is a time of superlative life. Frosty air sets our blood to racing. The nip of the wind quickens our step. Creatures abroad at this season of the year live intensely, stimulated by cold, using all their powers, all their capacities, to survive. Gone is the languor of August heat waves. Winter provides the testing months, the time of fortitude and courage. For innumerable seeds and insect eggs, this period of cold is essential to sprouting or hatching. For trees, winter is a time of rest. It is also a season of hope. The days are lengthening. The sun is returning. The whole year is beginning. All nature, with bud and seed and egg, looks forward with optimism.
Alone among the seasons, winter extends across the boundary line into two calendars. It is the double season. We meet it twice in each twelve months. It embraces the end and the beginning of the year. It includes the great holiday times of Christmas and New Year’s. Alone among the seasons it retains its original Anglo-Saxon spelling. Spring began as springen, literally “to spring” as the grass springs up; summer as sumer; and fall as feallan, referring to the falling leaves. But winter was always winter.
A poem
I ran here for the sunrise.
I ran here straight down a concrete corridor, a road
slippened by snow,
past a corner store where coffee and pie
rise to life in manifest alchemy.
With my breath steaming in locomotion
I approach the boulderow, a stone sluice
of Sisyphean resolve—bulwark against the lacustrine,
but this morn
like poppy seed cupcakes: ice-glazed
but dangerous.
My feet wedged, bracing and expectant,
I behold the firmament: a mailslot in the sky
flooding upward with milky amber-beams.
An atoll of ice-chunks,
particles scattered and fractal
from the shoreline, reflect the nascent dawn—a chessboard
—king’s to me today.
A man with a coffee mug and no gloves
comes beside me with a camera to capture the departing show.
‘I’ve been all over the world,’ he says, ‘and
this is right in our backyard.’
Revelers, we. Comrades in delight.
We drink our daily cup: mine today
is atmospheric.
A mighty evergreen near us guards the shore,
still wearing its Christmas lights.
Pales.
On my block the snow banks reign. They billow with the winter, building girth with every snowfall and polar vortex. This winter has been especially harsh. The banks are bloated with layers of snow that together tell the story of the season. The inch in late November sits at the bottom, hugging the frozen tundra and buttressing the snowfalls that followed: the blizzard before Christmas, the extra inches that welcomed the new year, and every nighttime shower that lubricated the roads and made hell of your commute. I can see all of these snowfalls now in the mounds that flank my neighborhood, bound together like a white pages in an epic novel. Season’s Greetings: The Snows of Winter 2014—coming to a bookstore or e-device near you. Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that these paper stories tell time like the rings of a tree, like that from which the stuff of paper comes.
There’s a particular snow story I noticed recently on my block, on an unseasonably warm day. With the sidewalks leading to the street barraged with shoveled snow and many driveway ends flooded with snowmelt, someone had forged a new pathway to the street through a sturdy snow bank. This makeshift staircase, formed by the boot prints of many waylaid walkers, had been fossilized by nightly icings. So long as the cold held, this corridor would too.
But how strange it felt to walk on water! For if it were July and I took this same detour, my feet would not leave the ground. But it is February, and as I climbed this temporary trail to the street, I thought nothing of the miracle it was to walk upon a path made of solidified water.
This will not last. Snow burns just as paper does, and as the temperature rises and the sun burns stronger the stories the snow banks tell will slowly melt away. They will disintegrate and be subsumed back into the muddy earth, where they will atomize and reform as new stories for the spring to tell with a smile. Those wearied by the long winter usually cannot wait to bid it an unceremonious farewell, as if they blame winter for getting in the way of the more marketable spring. But the beautiful stories the spring tells were not earned; they were given. The flowers and the green grass and the robins and the balm of the temperate air owe their existence to the grace of winter, to the unheralded work it performs to prepare the earth for resurrection. It is hard work, but it gets done every year.
It’s winter yet in early March, but I can feel the coming of spring. In this dreary in-between when the cold and snow seem to linger like uninvited guests at party’s end, I don’t despair. Rather, I spend my late-winter days finishing the weighty tome of winter and anticipating how the story of this year will continue in the sequel of spring come April.
To be continued.
A poem
The cold is a sharpener. A whetstone on the world.
It makes the sky stronger, like marble, more vivid in its crepuscular color.
It makes the air thicker: the crunch of my boots on the sidewalk’s new coat of snow slices through it, so clean and clear.
It makes my body taut, every breath in and out a miracle of muscle and will. Even the golden porch-light is bolder in the cold.
It makes my mind work harder: with every blink I fight its paralyzing touch on my thoughts. Every thought is a thought of cold.
The cold makes us sharper. And that’s just the way I like it.
“Wisdom comes with winters.” –Oscar Wilde
I’ve always taken for granted my ability to walk on ice.
Growing up in the Wisconsin winters, I had many opportunities to work and play on the ice, whether it be to shovel the sidewalk or play a pickup game of broomball. You learn pretty quickly how to adjust your walking motion when traversing a patch of ice; you can’t just amble through as usual, unless you want to repeatedly assail your tailbone.
Winter teaches hard lessons like this one. If you don’t learn how to walk, you’ll earn a quick trip to the icy pavement. If you don’t learn how to maneuver your car, a snowbank will find its way to your bumper on the quick.
Winters in the north can be harsh, and they ought to be. Many people disagree with this, but they miss something good when they pine only for tropical temperatures. As Charles Simic writes:
The cold concentrates the mind. The moment we step outdoors, we do what we have to do with uncommon intelligence and dispatch, unlike those folks who can afford to sit in the shade on some Mediterranean or Caribbean island. … History, E.M. Cioran said, is the product of people who stand up and get busy. Can one be a dreamer or a dolt on the North Pole?
When I take a walk or bike ride in the winter cold, my mind is razor-sharp. With the wind biting at my face and slowly numbing my less-layered limbs, the silly inconveniences of life I could care about only on a balmy 72-degree day evaporate with each cold breath. I expel so much energy bracing my body against the chill that re-entering a heated building feels purifying, like the cold is melting off me. I crave that feeling all year round.
The giddiness I display on a cold day or at the first sign of snow bewilders many. “How can you like the cold? You’re crazy.” I am. I’m a winter addict. I find my high in a walk through a snowy wood. In a soundtracked, nighttime snowfall. In the smell of the crisp winter air accented by a nearby bonfire. In a hot cup of tea thawing my frozen hands.
There is real beauty in the things we must struggle through. I love winter, to paraphrase a former president, not because it is easy but because it is hard. Some wish they could leap over winter into spring, escaping the blustery winds and slippery sidewalks for a more tepid time. But I say we need it. The deeper the winter, the more beautiful the spring. With their 75-and-sunny weather every day, Los Angelenos don’t know what they’re missing.
I’ll be able to appreciate all the more that first blooming flower in April not because it signifies winter’s end, but because I struggled through a season without flowers.
Living in a warm climate during the Christmas season is good and bad. On one hand, you can walk around in shorts and a t-shirt while your northern friends brave harsh winds and icy roads just to get to their mailbox. But on the other hand, it’s just not Christmas without the cold.
As a lifelong Midwesterner, I love the traditions of Christmas. My family has many of the well-known Hallmark moments of the holidays. My house and halls were always decked with green and ruby red Christmas lights and decorations. I always cut down the balsam fir evergreen with my family at a local tree farm and dragged it through the snow to the car, strapping it to the hood and bringing it home to bedazzle with ornaments new and old. We always – always – watch It’s a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve with the fireplace roaring and the popcorn popping. And, yes, I even love the Midwestern cold that suffuses all of these things.
But like the winter cold, these things happen every year, no matter what. When we vacationed in Florida over Christmas one year, we knew we wouldn’t have the cold or the tree, but we still brought our copy of It’s a Wonderful Life to keep tradition alive. And that’s what Christmas is often about: keeping tradition alive in spite of the circumstances.
In The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer uses the Exodus story to illustrate the idea of holiness and tradition, which are two concepts at the very center of Christmas. Tozer explains how the Israelites, having lived for four hundred years in Egypt surrounded by all kinds of idolatry, had forgotten the very idea of God’s holiness. To correct this, Tozer writes, “God began at the bottom. He localized Himself in the cloud and fire and later when the tabernacle had been built He dwelt between holy and unholy. There were holy days, holy vessels, holy garments. By these means Israel learned that God is holy.”
‘God is holy.’ That is the simple thought that permeates the Advent season. And so when I decorate my evergreen tree and listen to ancient hymns in church and watch a movie with my family and walk through the falling snow, I know that it is not these things in and of themselves that remind me of the reason for the season; it’s the warmth of God’s holiness.
“Let us believe,” Tozer concludes, “that God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find Him there.” Our traditions, like the Israelites’ cloud and fire, are best when they reveal God at His simplest and at His holiest.
Originally printed in the North Central Chronicle on April 3, 2009.
A friend of mine grew up with the California itch. Her family was from San Francisco but she was stuck in Wisconsin for most of her life. She always complained about it and talk about wanting to be an actress and live the life in Hollywood, get out of the Midwest and all that.
She eventually went to college in Los Angeles. But after a few years there she became disillusioned with the West Coast life for some reason. I thought nothing but a family reunion every decade would bring her back to the Midwest, but now she says she is coming home after graduation.
What brought her back? Maybe it was the bratwurst and quality beer. Midwesterners know how to eat and drink, that’s for sure. Maybe it was the sports teams. God knows the Packers are way cooler than the San Diego Chargers.
I don’t know exactly, but my point is we have a great thing going here in the Midwest. It’s hard to appreciate this when, if you’re like me, you have lived here your whole life. But we have seasons. Actual seasons. Californians don’t know the meaning of the word. All they get are sun and 70s. Some of you think that’s the perfect kind of weather. But when you get that all day, every day, it gets boring. You start thinking you’re entitled to perfect weather. Maybe that’s why West Coasters get that stereotype of entitlement.
Right now we are starting to enjoy the fruits of spring. There will be green grass and flowers and rebirth and sun. We get thunderstorms, baby rabbits, and puddles in which we can gleefully splash. Then summer will come with its freedom and fun and humidity and even more sun. Summer is a great season, sure, but our version doesn’t distinguish us from the rest of the world. Summer then leads us to autumn, the season that makes you think philosophically about life and death and bobbing for apples while you watch the colors fall from decaying trees.
And then, winter, the most polarizing season. The lovers love the snow, the sledding, the snowballs, and Christmas, while the haters hate the cold, the cold, and the cold. I am a self-proclaimed winter-lover. Yes, even the cold. It toughens us. It doesn’t allow us to take for granted the warmth of the summer. It makes the spring all the more beautiful after months of cold and dreariness.
You can’t go 10 minutes without hearing someone complain about the weather here. Like the weather is the only thing stopping them from enjoying their life. When did that become the case? June and July don’t have a monopoly joy. January has a share of it too. We are just exiting winter, so I suspect the complaints will subside-for now. Another year and the yelping will come back again, just as annoying as ever.
That’s why, amongst those who bemoan the trappings of winter, I exalt its virtues. I say I love it for all the reasons they hate it. It’s too cold, they say. All the better the warmth will feel. It’s too dreary, they say. All the brighter the sun will shine. In spite of all the bad things that are happening around us, I’m just trying to look for the good. We’re supposed to be living in the age of hope, after all.
So come November, as the temperatures drop and your nose hairs begin to freeze, turn that frown upside down and remember that Californians will never know how it feels to walk on ice. Or how it feels to get a snowball in the face. That, my Midwest friends, is something that is reserved for us.
Imagine: Darkness, accompanied by golden light from surrounding “Narnia” lamp posts. The snow slowly permeates everything in sight, including your face. The path you’re on shines like diamonds and swivels oh so gracefully alongside a sparkling river. Soft piano music dances into your ear, choreographed perfectly with the falling flakes. Now, tell me that God is not with you at that very moment.
Snow is commonly thought of as a metaphor for a sense of renewal or rebirth, but I see it as being able to see our worth. God drops this stuff down on us to show us that we can sparkle like diamonds and are so clean and new if we choose to be. Go outside the next time it is snowing at night and see what happens.
P.S. If you want to experience a living and breathing God, listen to Relient K’s album mmHmm. He is all over those lyrics.
