My appreciation for the coming and current taste of winter has grown steadily over the last couple of weeks. But never more than now. It began, of course, with an everyman love of the holiday which finds itself conveniently supplanted just days after winter’s arrival. Brazen in it’s ferocity, it lingers in the air well before it arrives. Like the way the air smells before a glorious rain. There in the days leading up to Christmas, we all feel hope amidst the curiousness of cold. You can’t help but do so, when everything that crosses your path is littered with Christmas lights and there seems an ever-present holiday hum in the air.
But what of winter despite, or rather, apart, from the holidays? What of the premature darkness, the gripping frost, the lonesome gray? What of the layers upon layers required to even walk out your front door? Call me crazy, but I have come to love these as well. I love that winter will set itself apart in such stark contrast to those seasons which it seems the majority appreciate far more. It has a boldness to it that each season has, but one far less understood. Like the woman in the boardroom whom every man misunderstands because of her brand of strength in the workplace.
And winter? She strips herself bare for all the world to see and takes no precaution for hiding herself except to draw in the night a little earlier everyday. Her contours, oh, how evident they become when all the leaves have fallen. Tree-covered mountains once only a silhouette of green are now marked by each individual tree, its branches, and the ground below. Ground we don’t see when everything is green or orange or fiery red. Limbs hidden to us and weighed down by the leaves they feed and give life to.
And we? We have the audacity to call her depressing. We say she is far too ugly for our taste and only worth something with a dressing of white which some of us aren’t so privy to experience too often. Everyday we become more intolerant of her presence and wish for the glory of every other season in which we might find ourselves more comfortable. More inspired. More unburdened.
Isn’t it fascinating that we, in our most bundled up state of existence, bear witness to the lightness and freedom of the earth in winter? It’s beautiful and inspiring and sad and wonderful all at the same time. Because then, when we are free of the scarves and the hats and sweaters and boots and all, creation takes on a new form far less skeletal and revealing. During those seasons, we do enough revealing of our own to make up for her hiding.
Winter has taken company with each of the seasons as right, in my mind, as I believe I’m finally seeing in the coming season the worth she has and the lessons she teaches. Even more than the vibrance of Autumn, the joy of Spring, or the radiance of Summer, I find myself most in need of the promise of the lightness of being of Winter.
But what of winter despite, or rather, apart, from the holidays? What of the premature darkness, the gripping frost, the lonesome gray? What of the layers upon layers required to even walk out your front door? Call me crazy, but I have come to love these as well. I love that winter will set itself apart in such stark contrast to those seasons which it seems the majority appreciate far more. It has a boldness to it that each season has, but one far less understood. Like the woman in the boardroom whom every man misunderstands because of her brand of strength in the workplace.
And winter? She strips herself bare for all the world to see and takes no precaution for hiding herself except to draw in the night a little earlier everyday. Her contours, oh, how evident they become when all the leaves have fallen. Tree-covered mountains once only a silhouette of green are now marked by each individual tree, its branches, and the ground below. Ground we don’t see when everything is green or orange or fiery red. Limbs hidden to us and weighed down by the leaves they feed and give life to.
And we? We have the audacity to call her depressing. We say she is far too ugly for our taste and only worth something with a dressing of white which some of us aren’t so privy to experience too often. Everyday we become more intolerant of her presence and wish for the glory of every other season in which we might find ourselves more comfortable. More inspired. More unburdened.
Isn’t it fascinating that we, in our most bundled up state of existence, bear witness to the lightness and freedom of the earth in winter? It’s beautiful and inspiring and sad and wonderful all at the same time. Because then, when we are free of the scarves and the hats and sweaters and boots and all, creation takes on a new form far less skeletal and revealing. During those seasons, we do enough revealing of our own to make up for her hiding.
Winter has taken company with each of the seasons as right, in my mind, as I believe I’m finally seeing in the coming season the worth she has and the lessons she teaches. Even more than the vibrance of Autumn, the joy of Spring, or the radiance of Summer, I find myself most in need of the promise of the lightness of being of Winter.
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