Leaves and Ice

It's winter here and a classic one at that, dark, cold and laced with a dampness that goes right through to the bone. Every winter here seems interminable, and this one is no exception - it seems to go on and on forever.

Here in the great white north, when we find ourselves in the iron grip of a deep and icy winter like this one, something happens to most of us. We go into hibernation mode like bears and become insular - we freeze up, close down and turn inward, away from this bitter season of long nights and the cold reality outside the windows. When winter arrives on the scene, we lock the doors, pull the draperies shut and crank up the heating apparatus. We huddle around the communal hearth, muttering about the state of the larder and our supply of firewood. We wait for the days to lengthen and the light to return - to live here in winter is to exist with the ancients and the wild creatures of the countryside. We do our best to tune out the presence of a season which we look forward to for its crystalline beauty, but would prefer to be without once it arrives. It was ever thus.

There are things we do not remember in winter, and things we fail to understand. We forget the cold clear water that is flowing effortlessly along under all the ice and snow. We forget that fallen leaves trapped within the ice and snow were once green and living things, and that they will provide compost or nourishment for trees and leaves still to come. We focus grimly on moving snow out of our way, and we fail to understand that snow itself is an integral part of our path, that next year's leaves, flowers and fruit are sleeping snugly somewhere underneath it all.

This is nature's own season of transformation and regeneration, an interval of fruitful darkness in which new life, new ideas and new paths are conceived. Now and again, I pause in my travels (and endless shovelling) to remember the Spring which is already on its way and the new life sleeping somewhere down under my winter boots, but most of the time, I forget. . . .