• Winter’s wonderful glory

By Jefferson Weaver
Staff Writer

I really wish it would snow.

There. I said it. Live with it. I love winter, even the gloomy, clammy wet days made for nothing but a fireplace, a good book, a cup of coffee and a dog on one’s feet. Most are not like that, of course; our winters in the southeastern part of the state can often be easy, and occasionally even balmy.

One of the reasons my folks came to North Carolina from the Northern Neck of Virginia was because of the weather. The Neck tends to be cold, bitterly cold, all winter, and snow is common enough to be as annoying as the Yankees who have settled in there, spreading from Washington City like a bad case of mold. Mother needed a milder climate, and Papa was tired of snow, ice, and cold weather.

The Old Man often looked at Mother in a funny way when I would announce my love of winter, and I think once he wondered if I wasn’t somehow switched at the hospital nursery.

My preference for the cold season is inexplicable at best; maybe it is a stubborn streak, or maybe I just prefer having the woods and fields largely to myself, since no winter weather is too rough for me to go for a walk. Indeed, some dear friends of mine even nicknamed me for a character on a cartoon, and while the warlock part doesn’t fit, I do will happily answer to Winter.

I do not see a reason to be cold and miserable, or stuffy and sweating in an overheated house. Indeed, I can always put on enough clothes to stay warm outside, and I get tired of being cooped up indoors on all but the worst days.
I also love a good, wet snowfall. Even if I am old enough to know better, I am still young enough not to care, and I enjoy a snowball fight, a good sled run on my ancient wooden straight-front, or just standing and looking at  the clean, soft white blanket that all too infrequently covers our landscape.

I had to stop and stand in the middle of a field last year and shout a praise to God when we had the big—by our standards, anyway—snowfall.

Regardless of the weather, traps have to be checked daily, and I was halfway through my line when I was able to see the forest, rather than the trees, if you will pardon the cliché. Perhaps the snow as opposed to the snowflakes is more appropos. I was noticing the snowdrifts against the canal banks, the way my tires broke down through the white crust to reveal just more white underneath, and the occasional proud, stubborn cornstalk standing tall through the white covering, but I wasn’t noticing the grandeur of the whole thing.

Stopping in the middle of the field road, where another path hinted at its existence under the cold white quilt, I stepped out of the truck and for a moment was truly awestruck. The sky was that almost painful blue that comes only after a hurricane or a snowstorm, when all the ill will has been flushed from the sky and God wants to reassure us that He is always in control.

I was the only person idiotic enough to be out at that time of day, and my trail was the first human path through the field. The pack was heavy enough to leave plenty of signs of my fellow beasts—hungry deer headed from oak grove to oak grove, rabbits zig-zagging in panic, coyotes and foxes following their respective meals across the stark pure white that had been gray earth the day before, and would be black gumbo mud by the next week. In one or two places something small and furry or slow and feathered left behind a tiny tragedy in the snow, a spot of red marring the otherwise near perfection of the white field.

The day was bitterly, achingly frigid, and my lungs hurt to breathe. My bedraggled furburger hat that most folks find so amusing was earning its keep and then some. My fingers hurt, since my warm gloves had been spotted with something that smelled sinister which I didn’t want smeared across the steering wheel.

As I looked across the field, I was struck for a moment by the way everything was clean, nearly pure, and full of promise. Sure, it would be weeks before Dean and Ennis could begin pulling the big green monsters across the field, disking and plowing and harrowing and seeding, then praying for enough rain but not too much, in a month so steamy and hot one would be hard pressed to believe this same  field was once covered in  frozen, crystalized water. It would be weeks before the first green shoots could begin to appear in the tortured fertile soil, awakened ever so slowly by the warmth of a spring sun. But I saw the promise there, the promise of a new season and a new year.

I saw that promise in another place the other day, when a tiny patch of jonquils, those flowers I love so much, began thrusting their spears through the soil, planning an early attack on the dreaded month of February with off-yellow blooms and green stems.

The promise of winter was evident in the doe I saw the other day as well. Apparently a child bride or the recipient of some early-rut romance, her belly was swelling slightly, even though her bones were beginning to show with winter’s hunger. Most of the corn piles and feed plots, which I believe have altered the natural feeding habits of whitetail deer, shut off quickly on Jan. 2 as deer season became a memory. By the second week of January, most deer have to work for a living again, and this doe was doing just that, urgently working the woods for sustenance for herself and the fawns inside her.

We too often get caught up in the day to day chill, or the excessive cost of heating, or whining children and grumbling adults stuck inside, or the odd rain storm that threatens to become—or becomes—ice. Nerves fray, and the clear, startling cold of a night sky pierced with sharp stars is passed over as we hurry from warm car to warmer house.

Personally, I love the cold, and all the promises of winter. It won’t be long until the jonquils are joined by other brave buds and blossoms, and then suddenly one day my beloved woolen underlayer will be just plain hot.

My swallows will return to their nest on the porch, and if the new kittens haven’t learned how to hunt and climb, there will be strident peeps as the eggs hatch and another flock of hungry mouths compete for the offerings of the desperate beaks of their parents.

The turkeys will strut, and the fawns will stagger, and the rabbits will dance in the moon of March and April. Possums will get fat again, and I’ll hang up my traps for a fishing pole.

I love the spring, the summer and the fall—but most of all, I love winter, and all it promises.

–              Weaver is a staff writer with the News Reporter. Call him at 642-4104, ext. 227; email him at jeffweaver@whiteville.com, or catch up with him on facebook.com.