January and February of each year are what I call the Doldrums. Winter has set in and is inescapable. Some years, the worse of winter comes during these months. We’ve lost the distraction of the holidays when winter sneaks in while we are busy with the reverie and fun.
Rural living seems to bring a more intense winter. Since there is much more nature surrounding us here, we are far more keenly aware and effected by it. In town, streets are plowed and often walks are shorter between a house and garage. Out here, there might be 100 feet between the car and the front door; if one even uses the front door. Usually it is the side or kitchen door. At our house, the street-facing door is ignored. Guests don’t even use it. Any snow plowing that is done is done by us, by hand or machine.
In the times that I spend out of doors in the wintertime, the one thing that stands out to me is the stillness. I can watch a view for half an hour and see no change in the scene. No car, animal, sound, wind or distraction occurs. There feels to be a quiet, a waiting. The ground and all that is beneath it is on hold, dead to the life it once held in the burst of spring and growth of summer. Fall brings flying geese and leaves, windy days of rain and streams of water around. There seems to be change as a constant. Not so in the winter.
The calm and quiet of winter out here is almost deafening. The lack of action makes me look harder for something to see. The horses stand at attention in their snow-covered pasture. They don’t move. There is nothing to scavenge in the dirt below. They just stand there waiting for feeding time. Even if they notice me standing nearby, they seldom walk over to the fence to greet me. In the other months, they’ll meander over waiting for a treat, or a scratch on the nose. Now they are waiting too.
Of course, we know that to everything there is a season under heaven. The Bible and the poets tell us this. They say that it is the time to die. We see winter as that time of death. The time before the rebirth that spring brings to us. However, standing out in it, I don’t feel the death. I feel the waiting, the anticipation. Marvelous things are happening on a biological level that will lead to the rebirth that is coming. We just can’t see it with the naked eye. It’s there. I can feel it. I can hear it in the stillness. It increases in the weeks that go by through February. March always seems to bring the advent of the changes. Rain starts. Snow melts. Little sprouts appear. The calendar tells us that it is no longer winter as does what crops up under our feet and in the trees.
When these winter doldrums could make me sad and depressed, I listen instead for the silence, knowing that beneath the blanket of white there is much that is actually happening that will bring forth the joy and goodness of spring. The blanket of white will be replaced with the bright green that will re-cover the hills and pastures that surround me. The white sky will be much more blue and intense. I choose to enjoy the stillness and quiet instead of letting the sadness of winter cause me to feel sad. I feel joy in the quiet and savor the knowing of what is about to come.
