The Freeze-Thaw Cycle

This winter has granted us days and weeks of subzero temperatures and a few modest snowstorms. It has perhaps not been unusual, although my remembrance of a “normal” winter probably melts and disappears each year, distracted as I am by the raucous newness of spring. The stalwart citizens of the Midwest hold remarkable events from winters past in collective memory: the blizzards that required days to dig out; the extreme cold that froze soap bubbles in crystalline globes; the February days that were so unusually warm that some dared to brazenly flaunt their colorless winter legs in shorts. The ordinary freeze-thaw cycle, though, is neither unusual nor unexpected. We marvel each year at the highs and lows, then forget them again until next season. For the past two days, the snow has melted in diamond layers, in islands and rivulets, until the patchwork of mud and grass has been knit together into a sloshy, green-grey blanket. The pewter sky and dancing flurries are gone for today, and the earth exhales a promise of spring. I delight in this unusual day but I don’t get attached. The warmth is lovely for a couple of days, but in January it will never last. Winter is a lesson in patience and perseverance.

The months after Christmas and New Year feel like a protracted vigil until spring. I love a gathering of friends around the fireplace, the first soft snow of the season, the crisp light of Orion low on the horizon, and even the initial slowing and darkening of the season. But by the middle of January my mood is as pockmarked as the brown patches in the snow and as crusted as the layer of salt on my car. I must have the gene for winter appreciation woven somewhere into my DNA. My ancestors all came from cold, northerly lands and chose to migrate to places with equally harsh winters. Perhaps they loved the things that I love — greeting the dark morning with a sky full of stars; the sapphire dome over a blinding carpet of snow; a slap of cold air; a warm mug of coffee. Perhaps this love was enough to make up for the frostbitten reality of milking cows and cleaning barns in January. Or perhaps they possessed a stubborn, shrugging acceptance of fate, or lacked a certain amount of imagination. An honest examination of myself and my family does not provide a clear answer to that particular question.

What I do know to be true is that both the predictability and wild surprise of seasonality have seeped into my beliefs and sensibilities like melting snow. Although my own spirit, and, so often, the spirit of the nation and our precious planet feel as frozen as the mid-winter ground, I know that spring still comes. Sometimes it arrives late, or violently, in fits and starts, but come it always does. Even now, when everything is brown and withered and stripped, seeds and insects just below the surface are waiting to emerge and take a new form when the time is right.

Spring — actual spring — is still months away. There will be still more repetitions of this freeze-thaw cycle. I accept today, this sunny, 50 degree day in January, for what it is… one glorious anomaly. I am prepared to trod through a few more dark, snow-laden mornings in order to dance into a season of blooming and light. As this part of the earth tips back slowly toward the sun, it will be a challenge to remember the harsh, sharp-edged beauty that lives in the cold, the dark, and the silent. Until then, the repetitions of this freeze-thaw cycle will crack roads that seemed solid and straight and create potholes that will take all summer to repair. Perhaps those fragile edges needed to be broken open anyway.