Winter Doldrums

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It is frigid outside and has been for a few days now.  It is frigid in many parts of the country.  The holidays have come and gone. Now begins the nitty gritty of hard winter work.  I find myself listless and not wanting to go out or exercise or paint or take pictures or do much of anything I usually love to do.  I have a cold but that does not excuse this lassitude and when I go to my favorite deli, I find that Terry is in the same mood.  “I was ready to go home the moment I came in,” she said.  And I wondered.  My husband was dour and I was sour.  What is this?  Could it be some vestigial remnants of human hibernation?  Maybe we should hibernate for awhile each winter.  We binge on food and drink over the holidays.  Perhaps we should be sleeping off the extra pounds.

I who love winter and live for Fall each summer find myself longing to hear the music of the spring peepers.  It is months away– well, about a month and a half away.  They are the first harbingers of new life for me.  Terry, who also loves winter, tells me today she is sick of winter.  Perhaps it is this string of Arctic air and grey days and icy road conditions.  Perhaps it is the human condition to always be dissatisfied with something or other.

I miss the squirrels.  It has been so cold they seem to be laying low in their nests.  Judging from the tracks in the back yard the only animals on the move are the deer.  And as much as I love the silence of winter, I find myself longing for the sweet dulcet music of birdsong at mating season in spring. 

We bought this calendar that has a celestial map of the sky for each month so you can find the constellations in the night sky.  But it has been too overcast or too cold or too something.  We have yet to go out with flashlights and match the map with the canopy of stars.  But I am still humbled in a dazzled psyche over the view of the stars through the stripped down trees that we see out our window from bed every night.

Then again maybe it is laziness.  Too many sugar highs in December have led to a deep low in February.  And with a tease of spring one day in which the temperature reached almost 50 degrees maybe we were let down even further.  Not liking being unproductive I think I can overcome this– but maybe the thing is to go with the flow and allow a period of inactivity, let the land lay fallow, so that an increase in productivity may eventually result.

Maybe the thing to do is not to panic.  Spring will come.  Hopefully, if man has not destroyed all the vernal pools, the spring peepers will return and, if pesticides have not destroyed all the birds, sweet mating songs will be sung and bees and other insects will buzz.  And if the weather turns more clement, our spirits will once again soar and we will be busy buzzing with the business of living.

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February 5, 2023 | Categories: Animal & Landscape Photographs, Black and White Photography, Nature Columns, Newspaper articles, Uncategorized, Winter Trees | Tags: Cold, Depression, Hibernation, Landscape Photography, Lassitude, Laziness, Nature photography, Spring, Trees, Winter, Winter doldrums, Winter moods | 28 Comments