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. 

Snowscape

The landscape near home transformed last week, from dull and dreary late-November blah to the soft snow and sparkle that inspire those of us who love winter to welcome it back each year.  

On the afternoon before Thanksgiving, the dog and I had walked through the woods, crunching across a thick layer of fallen leaves and watching the final rays of a quickly-sinking sun sift through the bare, gray limbs of trees. Two days later, those leaves and limbs were covered by a few inches of snow. 

Snow changes everything. It softens the hard, homely edges of late fall. Covers the blemishes of the brown fields and color-depleted forest floor. Drapes the evergreens in lacy white and sets the mountains to morning brilliance and evening alpenglow. 

 

Snow – for me, at least – also provides a seasonal attitude adjustment. There is a stretch of time in late autumn (call it Stick Season – or simply November) where my instinct is to turn inward, hunker down, stay inside for all those growing hours of darkness. An outdoors lover by nature and nurture, during this time I often have to force myself to get out of the house and into the outside for that fresh air fix. I find myself wondering how I can possibly love the coming winter season – and if I really do, or it’s just what I’ve always known. 

 

Then it snows, and all is right in my world. 

 

Despite my touchy relationship with November, this year’s lingering warmth and smattering of sweet sunshine softened the drabness. I’ve often thought I’d adjust more easily to this seasonal shift if we went from 50-degree days straight into winter, and that’s sort of what last week’s snow transformation felt like. In a day, we shifted from Thanksgiving to the Christmas season, from autumn to winter, from blah to brilliant. 

 

The first snow also fell on a rare weekend when my family had very little on the calendar. We were free to simply revel in the newness of this season without rushing to the ski slopes or driving to soccer practice. Homework was done. No one had to go to work. 

 

We walked through the woods and had our first (short) ski through the field. We laughed at the dog’s joyful snow-rolling antics. Even after dinner, we returned outside. A few evenings earlier, the dark had seemed all encompassing. Now, a soft glow reflected from the snow, providing just enough light for us to make our way along the quite roads. The stars, I think, shine more brightly when there is snow sparkle below.

 

I know it’s easy to love winter when it’s sparkly and new. I know that in the coming months there will likely be rain that ruins the snow and my mood, bitter winds that make me want to stay inside by the fire, and nights long and dark enough for me to yearn for spring’s return. But it snowed last week. And, for now, that’s enough. 

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's December 2, 2021 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record. 

Stick Season

Each year, when we reach November, I find ways to distract myself from – well, all things November-y. The damp chill that settles into bones. The protracted dark of the mornings and evenings. The stark bareness of the landscape once all the leaves drop from their trees and the growing, blooming things of summer have turned to dormancy.  

The moniker of Stick Season is certainly apt for this month between the blazing colors of autumn and the sweeping snow and lacy frost that decorate winter. I prefer all the other seasons to this one. Even Mud Season, on the other side of winter, at least holds the promise of more light and warmth and blooming. 

 

During Stick Season, I will myself to appreciate the little things, the everyday blessings. I revel in the sunny days, even if they’re cold, just for the fullness of light. I am thankful for the leaves that hold on for a bit longer – on the rugosa hedge and the lilac bushes. For the lingering golden glow of the tamaracks. And for the views – both macro and micro – that open up during Stick Season: mountain vistas obscured in other seasons by dense foliage, a cecropia moth cocoon hanging in the cold light from a now-bare branch.

 

I notice things I miss in other months. The deer that come to eat fallen apples in our just-mown field, which at the start of autumn was filled with a riot of goldenrods and asters in various hues. The few ferns that remain green through the year – even now, amid the browns and grays – but are just part of the landscape of color during summer and early fall. The artful form of trees emerging in their bareness: the bend of each trunk, the spread of branches ending in intricate webs of twigs. 

 

It seems right, too, that Thanksgiving comes near the end of this month, this Stick Season. It is easy, perhaps, to be thankful for spring’s pastel flowers and summer’s easy cheerfulness, for the colors of autumn and the festivities of winter. Stick Season allows us – or forces us, perhaps – to consider the things right before us and to contemplate the things for which we are thankful.  

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's November 4, 2021 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record.