Winter Love Affair

I pity the people who live here and don’t like winter. Those six months from November through April, when snow falls and ice builds up and winter winds whip through the yard, must be excruciating for those who loath this long season.

Mind you, while I feel pity for the winter haters, I certainly don’t sympathize with them. If you choose to make your home in New England, especially northern New England, you’d best embrace winter and all it brings. I’ll admit that in November I miss the long, warm days not long past, and come April I am often beginning to tire of snow. But from December through March I am in winter’s thrall.

My love affair with winter has been lifelong. There was little seasonal distinction, when I was a child, in the parental directive to “Go play outside!” In fact, playing outside was encouraged and modeled by our parents year-round, but extra effort was made in the winter. From just before Christmas to sometime around Easter, each Friday afternoon we’d load up the family car with kids, ski gear, and sandwiches for dinner and hit the road for a three-hour drive north. After two glorious days of skiing and playing in the snow, we did the trip in reverse Sunday afternoon. This was repeated every weekend from the time my brothers and I were babies until we all left for college and beyond, and my parents retired to the mountains and gave up the weekly commute.

Skiing has always been a central player of my winter days, but it is only one of many things I love about the season. As I write this, a few days before Christmas, the forecast is calling for rain: a four-letter word of the harshest variety for us snow lovers. But the weather prior to this meltdown, at least north of Franconia Notch, has created a winter wonderland this mid-December that rivals any I have seen, showcasing the season’s enormous beauty. We can only hope that winter’s return is swift and plentiful.

On the best of wintry days, snow falling in big, fluffy puffs or intricately dainty flakes transforms the landscape to sparkling. Views obscured by foliage in summer are opened up when the trees are bare. Those bare branches covered in a crystal-clear skim of ice or the festive white of winter are quite literally dazzling – the stuff of winter storybooks.

Beyond winter’s beauty, if you embrace the cold and snow of the season, the opportunities for entertainment really are endless. There are hills to sled and snow angels to feather into fluff. Snowmen and snow animals to create. Snow forts to construct, with tunnel entrances and high walls and snow benches. Skating on the pond or at the town rink. Snowshoe treks through the forest, where the tracks of myriad woodland animals – along with cross-country skiers and their dogs – crisscross the snowy ground. And when the sky is clear, the early dark of winter eve266nings allows for stargazing just after dinner.

Best of all, in winter there is skiing. For this, I drive with my family along the snow-covered-tree-lined roads of my childhood to reach trails on the same mountain where I skied as a kid. The expectation now, in my family, is the same as it was when I was a girl: on winter days we roll out of warm beds to a morning-cool house and prepare for a day of skiing. There are glades to explore and fast runs on groomed trails, chairlift conversations with friends, and the thrill of speed, wind in your face, and the pure joy of being alive.

When we come home in the afternoon, with the chill of the day lingering on rosy cheeks, sometimes we light a blaze in the fireplace and sip hot cocoa. Sometimes the kids are content to nestle into a nest of blankets and read a book or watch a movie. Often, though, they are soon back outside, building jumps for their sleds or shoveling a new feature into the snow fort. There is simply too much to do, too many adventures to find and fun to be had, to stay inside.

We are on the brighter side of the winter solstice now; the days are slowly lengthening. The abhorrers of winter have that small glimmer to cling to. The winter lovers among us, however, know the fun is just beginning.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the December 26, 2014 edition of the Littleton Record.

Embracing November

November is not my favorite month. October’s colorful brilliance culminates in the pageantry and sugar high of Halloween, and then we wake the next day and it is dreary old November. It is dark, the landscape devoid of color, the air damply chilly. It is too cold (at least for me) to ride a bike or embark on an enjoyable jog, yet it’s not quite ski season, and the twinkling lights and joyful chaos of Christmas seem still far away.

Embracing November with friends.

Many people of adequate means and time flee their northern homes during November, heading south to warmer, brighter locales. The rest of us dig out our extra layers, lament the shortening days, and muddle through this in-between season.

At least, that’s how I’ve viewed November in the past: an in-between time to be endured. This year, however, I am determined to embrace November.

Instead of decrying the loss of color from the hillsides and light from the days, I’ve made a point of noticing the intricate subtleties of the season, looking more closely at the gifts of nature that exist beyond summer’s flamboyance and fall’s color explosion, enjoying the downtime that comes between seasons.

With the mixed bag of weather typical of any time of year in northern New England, I’ve managed to take advantage of a few of the warmer, brighter November days outside. The kids and I spent an afternoon tending to some final gardening, pulling out the remnants of our late planting of sweet peas and harvesting the last row of cold-stunted carrots.

In our final homage to growing, blooming things for the year, we dug cylindrical holes into the garden outside our large living room window and dropped the papery bulbs of daffodils and crocuses there. These, we hope, will evade hungry deer and rodents looking for a cold-weather nibble and burst forth in happy spring color next year.

The day after our bulb planting, the mountains in view from that window garden were snow-capped, earning their White Mountains moniker. The high-elevation blanket of white was a reminder that on the other side of in-between November comes winter, with its glittering holiday shine and snowy splendor.

We’ve also visited friends a short drive south this November, exploring new fields and woods, passing old cellar holes and their long-forgotten stories: a hike with a different view and good company. We’ve wandered some familiar trails close to home, too, with other friends – a posse of kids happy to be out of school on a sunny day and oblivious to the scarcity of color and the fact that it is dark these days at 5 o’clock. Happy oblivion, it turns out, is contagious – at least for an afternoon.

Even on the gloomy-sky days, when I need a break from sitting at the keyboard, I have headed into the woods out the back door with the dog, who is always willing and good company. With the trees denuded of their leaves, the landscape, though stark, is more giving. Without a canopy of foliage blocking the way, woodpecker excavations are revealed, formerly hidden birds’ nests exposed, and various hollows visible high in the trees. I speculate some of these may house the barred owls we hear calling, “Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoooah,” back and forth in the dark of night throughout the year.

Amid the austerity of November’s backdrop – that dullish palate after leaf fall, but before snow fall – the season’s sparing color, if you look closely, is like a gift before winter. Deep crimson blackberry canes rise vividly at the edge of the tawny field. The tiny, scarlet tips of “British soldiers” lichens show bright atop their gray-green base on boulders and logs.

Faded gold beech leaves cling resolutely to their branches to provide a bit of muted color and an almost cheerful rustling in the late fall breeze. The black-splashed trunks of white birch pop through the drab backdrop. Sulfur-shaded tamaracks, whose summer green blends inconspicuously into the surrounding forest, stand out now in their late-fall yellow.

Our spindle tree adds a little bit of lovely to November.

The brightest bit of color, reminiscent of summer’s endless and cheerful hues, is from a small tree at the edge of our porch. A European spindle tree, I think it is, planted long before we arrived at this house. From its branches, which still hold their red-tinged leaves, hang small, bright pink, vaguely heart-shaped lobes, each surrounding an impossibly orange orb. These, I’ve learned recently, are the tree’s seeds: lovely, but poisonous.

I pass these unlikely bits of brilliance each November day as I come into the house from my various travels. It seems odd to find such warmth of color when I am shivering in my thick coat. Beyond their splash of pink and orange lies the field in its pale November shades of worn brown and faded russet, and beyond the field stand the mountains and their white peaks: summer color and the winter that will soon envelop us in white, both bordering on November’s in between.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the November 14, 2014 edition of the Littleton Record.