The Winter Loves Me

"The winter loves me," he retorted, and then, disliking the whimsical sound of that, added, "I mean, as much as you can say a season can love. What I mean is, I love winter, and when you really love something, then it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love." -Phineas, A Separate Peace, John Knowles

I have always loved this quote. I just wrote it up there from memory and only had to make a couple small changes after I Googled it to check for accuracy. 'Course, in the book, Gene doesn't buy it. But he honors that Phineas thinks it's true and so he doesn't argue. He says his 17 years of experience has shown the claim to be more false than true. I am squarely in Phineas's camp. Not only do I love winter and winter loves me back, but I think this applies to other stuff, too. But that's a different post. This one is about winter.

How I love winter. Truly love it. It's my favorite season. Has been for just about my whole life. There are lots of reasons for this. Some of them:

- I hate the heat. HATE HATE HATE it. When it is over 78 degrees, I am uncomfortable. I run hot anyway, so this makes sense.
- My birthday is smack in the middle of winter. And I love my birthday, too.
- There's something to be done about the cold (unlike the damn heat). You can put on more clothes, walk faster to warm up, and stay in by a nice fire. (I can hear the arguments already about air conditioning. I will say that it is expensive, not everyone has it, and a fan is just not the same. And, not being able to go outside sucks.)
- No lost sleep. It is so hard to sleep when it's hot. But when it's cold, bring on another blanket and snuggle in!
- It brings SNOW! And snow means skiing and snowshoeing and snowball fights and snow angels and sledding and so much great stuff that ANYONE can have. You don't need a ride to the ocean or lake and you don't need a boat and you don't need other stuff that leaves out people who are poor or struggling. It is fun in an equal way that anyone can access.

We had the second big storm of the season yesterday. I missed the first one - being away in Puerto Rico (where it was too hot) for Xmas. I had the aftermath - had to clean off the car and shovel some when I got home, but it was nothing in comparison, and it melted very quickly afterwards. This one is epic. The snowbanks are huge! The piles of plowed and shoveled snow are tall! The entire world looks like a winter wonderland. It's so beautiful!

Yesterday afternoon, a friend and I carried our snowshoes over to the Arnold Arboretum, which is across the street from where we live and we put on our snowshoes and grabbed our poles and headed out. I wasn't really prepared for how amazing it would be. I've snowshoed before, in Vermont, in the woods. But here I was, in the heart of Boston - in the 'hood, actually, surrounded by trees and snow and untouched fields. There were people with sleds, people on cross country skis, people on snowshoes. Sometimes we were with or around other people, sometimes we were all alone for a long while as we trekked.

I know the Arboretum quite well. I know the main paved roads that run through it as well as some of the other paths and trails that go through the forests. Yesterday, though, we were totally turned around - a few times. Everything being white, we had no idea where we were. At one point, we cleaned a foot of snow off a sign so we could at least try to get our bearings. We climbed up hills, we trekked through big fields that had marshy grass underneath (we could see a couple of tiny exposed spots) and we found places we'd never been before. Because when there's a foot or better of snow, you can walk ANYWHERE! Even places you could never walk otherwise, because you'd be trekking through the aforementioned marshland.

There are so many different types of trees in the Arboretum, from many different countries. There are some with red tones to their bark. Yesterday, they were practically glowing red. With low light because of the cloud cover and no competing colors since everything else was black/brown and white, the red really stood out. It was very cool.

This morning, after the gym, I was driving home at 7 a.m. The sun had just come up and the sky was not quite blue yet. It was pink and orange and green and blue. Looking through snow covered trees with this background made me stop. I wished I had my camera. Then I pulled over to mail something and got a look at the city in the distance. JP is lined up with the Pru and that other building with the dome top. The sun was reflecting off them and the orange behind them with the snow in the foreground was spectacular. Little moments make the big ones more bearable.

Next weekend, I go skiing and then do some more snowshoeing in Vermont. And hopefully, this snow will last for a while so some more Arboretum snowshoeing can be had. One of the downfalls of living as far south as Boston and so close to the ocean is that our snow often melts away as quickly as it came. Temps this time around sound like we might hang on to this for a while though.

I am not bothered in the least with the effort snow takes. It means shoveling out the driveway and the hard piles of snow the plow leaves at the end of the driveway - often more than once. It means shoveling out the car - chipping off the ice - making sure I always have enough windshield wiper fluid in the car. It means driving slower and more carefully. It means looking more carefully at intersections lest I miss a car or a kid behind a huge snowbank. It means dirty shoes that have to be taken off at the door instead of just waltzing into my house as usual. It means a car covered in salt residue and having to wash the car more often. It means looking harder for a parking spot because in Boston, you do not park where there is an end table or a lawn chair or a trash can. This is a mark of pride someone left, signaling that they worked long and hard to dig their car out, and when they return, that spot should be there for them to park in again. (Mayor Menino keeps threatening to send out the garbage men to pick up all these markers and haul them away as a message that this practice isn't acceptable, but it's never happened, and most of us support it, anyway.)

I am not bothered by any of that effort, because when you love something, that love takes effort. And the winter loves me back - it gives me gifts. It makes my body feel better, it allows me to snuggle under my three blankets at night in my favorite jammies all warm. It allows me to drink hot tea and chocolate. It lets me stand at the top of a mountain and then fly down at speeds I otherwise never experience. It gives me weekends with my family and friends in Vermont, something I've had since I was a baby and that has continued for over 30 years. It brings the occasional snow day with no work and being shut in the house with nothing to do but watch 8 more episodes of Rescue Me or read the rest of the book I'm loving. It gives me my birthday, which each year I celebrate somehow with friends and family. It gives me WinterFest at Cobbett's Pond. And as its final gift, it gives me Spring when it finally decides to close up shop for the year and allow the leaves to bloom again and the crocuses to pop out and the flowers to grow again.

I know not everyone loves the winter like I do. And in return, it doesn't love you very much. That's okay. Summer doesn't love me, and I'm fine with that. Winter is my boyfriend. And so far, its given me years of happiness. I expect a lot more of them to come.