My love for winter comes from deep within. I love to reminise on the memories of being outside for hours at a time during my youth. What I mostly remember about the season is the feeling, the smell, the visual appeal, and my dutch rosie cheeks.
My heart feels like it's going to burst when the snow falls in thick waves. For some reason, dusk in the winter has this incredible hold on me. The still silence, with only the wind whistling through the bare and evergreen trees. The dusk snowfall. If you're still enough you can hear it coming down. This time of year is serious. It's survival of the fittest with the animals, and survivial of emotions with humans.
If I could disappear into the wildnerness for all of winter and the preparation with autumn, I would be so happy. Being in the cabin feels like I'm in the wilderness, and I am. It almost feels like being in the womb again. In this insulated warm womb. Except, I can peer outside and see slow life going on around me. Slow life like seeing the winter birds feeding at my suet.. perhaps I'm making them dependant on my offerings. Slow life like an oak leaf hanging on to it's branch. Slow life like hibernating animals and slow heart beats.
My senses come into full swing when a thought of winter crosses my mind. The smell of fresh snow, and of fresh air. The air smells clean. Deep breaths of cold freeze your nostrils, pain your lungs, or make them stronger. It's the deep breath of winter air that feels like a renewal for the new and changing seasons ahead. A fresh start internally.
The low winter sun rises in the morning and the flakes on the ground shine like crystals. You've never seen anything so true to colour. Sometimes it can be blinding. The low winter sun shines through me like no other time of year. It fills my heart and brings me happiness. My body needs that sunlight and reacts more intensely because of the lack of sun I receive during winter. There seems to be nothing more beautiful in winter when we receive a snowfall overnight and you wake up to pine, spruce and cedar boughs weighed down with the heaviness of snow. Reminds me of being in Algonquin Park for a winter hike with the proposal of marriage from my husband. You could hardly make it through the trail the boughs were weighed down so much.
Lakes, ponds, rivers and creeks freeze. We tie up our skates and hit the ice. Hard, cold ice. Nothing is more fantastic than spending a day outside with friends and family with a warm fire, hot drinks, a toboggan down the hill, and rosie cheeks. A visit to the waterfall on my husband's family property is a very spiritual experience any time of year, but I love having a fire there when the water is frozen. I love the snap of dead cedar branches and the quick warmth they give by burning fast. Light wood. Blocked by the gusts of wind coming off the hills in the fields, the waterfall in the cedar woods is a sight and experience.
The first Christmas that my husband and I were together, he made me a wood duck box. Every year, we hike out to the creek where the home is with fresh wood shavings and change the bedding in the box. It's such a wonderful task. How happy those ducks must be when they return in the spring to find their beds have been made and their sheets are clean. Winter's exciting what with the new activities I've been introduced to, or the confidence I have being outside for long periods of time. Being prepared and warm enough. That can make or break you.
North is the direction of winter. That Northern pull. It's in my blood and in my spirit. I love you old North.
Cobi Sharpe
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