Brief Praise for Solstice and the Winter Season

Why I can't stop loving winter and its many gifts and lessons.

A walk by the river on a December morning is a walk among magic. The cardinals and a few robins busy themselves gathering and drinking among rushing water whose movement is steadily being stilled by the growth of ice. The sun is up but not yet high enough to shine upon my face. Instead, it takes its time warming the trees’ skeletons from the top down. The dog and I skitter on as do the squirrels, moving alongside a few mallards floating with the current. I take the whole scene in and swallow it down where it churns up a familiar, soul-deep longing for winter. I am ready for the cold, that bristling teacher, that bracing friend.

As a child, I knew winter by its deep drifts and icy walks to school. Out in the cold entrance, the hooks nearly groaned beneath the weight of our winter clothes, laden with coats and scarves, hats and snowsuits. The cold was no reason to stay cooped up inside; mothers up and down the street expected their children to find something worthwhile to do outside while they kept about their work inside. Ours was no different.

We spent many dark, frigid evenings at the neighbor’s pond, flying out the door after supper with our skates thrown over our shoulders, running toward the lanterns and children gathering around the frozen water across the way. At the pond’s edge, the elder children helped the younger lace up and among us all sat an unspoken, shared commitment to keep the ice cleared of snow throughout the season for the smoothest skating possible. Around we went, some entangled in games, others just spinning, everyone playing for hours until parents hung out their doors, yelling their children’s names into the night air. So began the terrible work of unknotting laces and switching back to boots frozen along the shore until home we trudged where hot baths and warm beds awaited.

In those childhood winters, we were rivers of snot, blistering red cheeks, numb at both ends but on we played, and often ruthlessly. Snowballs packed to ice aimed for faces that were later shoved deep into the snow and scrubbed nearly raw. Hardly anyone dared to cry or tattle; instead, we drew alliances and hatched revenge plots. We were often vicious in winter, playing near the edge of cruelty with each other but frequently forgetting the score by the next day. I cannot say that we loved winter, only that we made do with the means given to us.

I found love for winter after I moved away from the Midwest and lost the winter I’d always known. Living in Tennessee for three and a half years was enough time to make me lonesome for the cold, the snow, and the ice. I wanted the brutality of winter and I wanted it for more than just a day or two. The longer I lived away from it, the more rabid for it I became. Now, after having spent nearly twice as much time in Wisconsin where winter is a little more about its business, I still have not tired of it. I welcome each season with an eagerness that borders on jubilee.

I love winter. I just do!

And I am ready for it. I am ready to be reminded of how to regulate against the extreme, how to be a lone person among a landscape laid bare. I need the lesson of gratitude again, a lesson that is available at every turn in winter when so much becomes scarce for so many—the light, collective safety, abundant shelter. Winter reveals the grave fragility of most things, humans included, and I think it is good to be reminded of this. In many ways, winter flattens and resets so much that we try to hoard and guarantee. It arrives with an invitation to surrender and I do not want to miss it.

These are the thoughts that linger today as Solstice arrives and winter begins. May we sink into the season and discover anew its many gifts.