Walking Through the Dark

As we approached the darkest – or at least the longest – evening of the year last month, the kids and I took to venturing out for post-dinner walks. Partly this is because with so much dark and so little daylight, it can be a challenge to fit exercise into the daylight hours. And partly it’s because there are only so many Netflix shows we can watch and games of cribbage we can play during these long nights. Sometimes we need another diversion. Or a fresh air fix. Winter evening walks are a way to have both.

Like lots of people around here, we live on a dirt road where the traffic is sparse, especially during dark winter nights. The only streetlight is at the far end of the road, and we tend to wander in other directions during our evening forays. I often strap a headlamp around my hat as we venture into the darkness, but my preference is to allow our eyes to adjust, to see our way bit by bit, sometimes with a twinkling of starlight or moonglow to guide us. 

Last year, these walks generally included only me and the dog. This winter, though, the kids have been wound up and ready to ramble with me after we’ve eaten dinner and done the dishes. Having their company is not always relaxing – they can be loud, and sometimes they run ahead to hide, then spook the rest of us by jumping out from behind some shadowy tree – but as the mother of teenagers, I figure I should take all the screen-free together time I can get these days. Plus, I’d rather have them running around outside than bouncing off the walls inside.

 

I remember watching people stroll along Lake Garda one summer, during college, when I spent a few weeks backpacking around Europe. Older couples walked arm-in-arm, kids scampered about, and nobody seemed to be going anywhere in particular. They weren’t in a hurry, or pumping their arms to burn extra calories from eating all that delectable gelato – just meandering along a lake in a resort town of mountain views and sidewalk cafes. 

 

Probably most of these evening strollers were tourists, like I was. And maybe this was not their normal, non-holiday routine. But I found the idea of an after-dinner walk charming – and memorable enough that the mental image has stuck with me for more than a couple of decades and countless life changes since those two nights spent at a hostel by the lake. 

 

My winter evening rambles through the neighborhood with my kids are vastly different from those Riva del Garda strolls through the bright evening light of an Italian summer when I was 21. Somehow, though, the one evokes a recollection of the other. 

 

Then, I was sipping wine with friends and basking in warmth of the season and our youth, suntanned and carefree and thrilled to be spending a couple of days in this foreign land. Now, I walk with offspring who have surpassed me in height, our feet crunching across a frozen, white landscape. Our breath curls as wispy clouds into the darkness. The snow-laced branches of balsam firs and hemlock trees stand as silent, magical sentinels along the quiet road.

 

Sometimes we step off the road and into the woods, where our tracks crisscross those of snowshoe hare, deer, foxes, and other forest dwellers. The dog revels in the scents floating in the night air and throws herself happily down to roll in the snow. The mountains of home rise along the horizon, their familiar craggy shapes barely discernible through the dark, the bright lights of snowcats prowling along ski trails. 

 

We come home rosy-cheeked and stomping snow from our boots onto the floor, where it will melt into small, cold puddles. These winter nights are long, yes. But our walks bring us, bit by bit, through the darkness.  

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's January 6, 2022 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record. 

Snow Globe World

It is snowing as I sit at my desk. Fat flakes sifting down outside the window. The evergreens along the driveway are, suddenly, adorned in winter white. The red splash of a December-blooming geranium on the inside of the glass contrasts with the snow globe scene beyond.

After last winter’s dismal snowlessness and too-warm temperatures, I’m almost afraid to hope the snow will stay this year, hesitant to picture the brown of the field buried in a blanket of cold white. But somebody is shaking the snow globe hard today. I hope it keeps coming.

In this busiest of busy months – with presents to select and wrap, decorating to do, cookies to bake, Christmas cards to write, parties to attend, school concerts – it is easy to feel overwhelmed. I love Christmas – the magic and festivity and excited anticipation – but in these busy December days I sometimes feel far behind, stressed out, overbooked.

Snow makes it better.

It also makes it harder to concentrate. I want to get outside, back on my skis, back on the mountain. We had one measly excuse for a powder day last year. Maybe, I think, this will be my only chance. But there is too much to do today. Too many deadlines. There is no time for a long outing to the mountain, booting up, riding chairlifts, floating through new snow.

Instead, I’ll dig out the old cross-country skis I never used last winter. Find the faux leather boots that are cracking at the edges. Glide through the field, whose stubbly vegetation, cut roughly by the bush hog, catches my skis now and then.

Into the woods with the puppy.

She’s just a few months old, still learning about the world around her. A world transformed now by white. At first, she bites at the tapered tips of my skis, pouncing as they move. But she’s a quick learner, and a few glides into the trek, the pup is running alongside me. Fast, excited, wondering what this new adventure is.

She pushes her nose into the cold snow when we pause, comes up with a faceful of white.

The snow keeps falling. White fluff floating onto the wide hemlock boughs that stretch over the trail. My old skis glide across this first winter layer, skimming over the brittle, barely-frozen leaves that fell in autumn and are not yet fully covered.

The puppy runs ahead, whimpering softly now and then. She’s never been this far into the woods and is happy when we reach the yard again, relieved at the familiarity of home.

Tomorrow, as they do every morning in December, counting backwards from 25, my children will remind me exactly how many days are left until Christmas. I’ll inhale, fighting anxiety over all there is still to do. Exhale. It is snowing. I’m dreaming of a white Christmas – and more ski treks through quiet of snowy woods.

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 9, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.