A cold winter, good for all souls

Instead of our usual Winter Lite we have been experiencing record cold. A cold snap, they call it. Nothing as punishing as in other parts of the country. A Kansan might poo-poo how we fret over our lemon tree, tucked in like a dowager on a cruise ship. A New Englander might not share my delight in how my neighbor’s frosted roof glimmers in the dawn.
I relish the cold. I’m glad that our winter has strongly declared itself this year. I like a two blanket night and the dog under the covers. A fast hike in the bright cold.  A hot tea afternoon with some classical music and a fat novel.
We celebrated the winter solstice in December with many candles and hot pepper soup, a toast to the shortest day of the year. From the solstice on there would be more daylight, but there would also be more winter. I reread Mary Oliver’s poem about winter coming.  “So let us go on, though the sun be swinging east and ponds be cold and black,” she wrote in “Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness.”
To me, the message is that the earth and maybe humanity need the darkness in order to start again. “In order that it may resume,” Oliver wrote.
Winter makes us want to warm our hands in each other’s coat pockets. We sit by the wood stove, which, at our home, is really a gas burner with faux red coals.  And huddle under my mother-in-law’s nubby apricot blanket, all wool, made in the USA. I call it “the Eloise,” as in, “It’s freezing in here, where’s the Eloise?”  
I’m not sure if it’s because of the continued chill but people in my neighborhood were not quick to douse their holiday lights. The porches are still twinkling and there are wreaths on front doors.
When a friend died his Native American soul-mate instructed those who gathered at the hospital to go back to his home and build a small fire in the yard. It should keep burning for at least four days, and it would be the obligation, he said, not of the family, but of friends, to tend the fire. That fire burned for more than a week, there being no pummeling rain to douse it and enough friends with firewood to contribute. It stayed lit from the last log at night to the first one in the morning.
Visitors tossed weeds and herbs into the fire, the sprigs of sage, rosemary and lavender that hadn’t given up in the overnight freezes. This ritual is a fine way to pay one’s respect. I think the idea is to encourage the spirit of the dead on its journey. This fire also lifted the spirits of the living.
People arrived dressed for the cold, introduced themselves and moved in and out of the fire circle, standing close and swapping stories about our cowboy-reporter-earth-loving friend.
Winter gives us a close-up look at the earth’s changes. The hydrangea bushes dropped all their leaves together in one night, like dancers fluffing their skirts. Every morning the dog and I pass a rose bush that is all sticks but for one tattered red bloom.   
The birds come close in winter if you wait quietly. I stand at my kitchen sink and nibble toast while they gather ‘round the birdfeeder.
Our days will warm up, we count on that here. But there will be more winter, more birds and stories, and then like Mary Oliver promises, we will resume.
Susan Swartz is an author and local journalist. You can also read her at www.juicytomatoes.com and hear her Another Voice commentary on KRCB-FM radio on Fridays. Email is [email protected].