A World Gone White
When I was little, we had a 30-inch birdbath that stood sentry in our yard through fair weather and foul. “Check the birdbath!” the grownups would call out once a snowstorm had passed, because it was our marker: its top-hat of snow measured exactly how much we'd have to shovel.Almost 20 years ago when we closed my childhood home, I brought that birdbath to my current yard and, well, I will just say this: I suppose it’s still out there but it’s buried completely.Our sweet old lilac lost its whole middle section in that first big storm. Ditto the tall hydrangea that's been tapping people on the shoulder every time they walk along the sidewalk next to our house.And now two storms and a deep freeze later the world remains dipped in a thick white batter. Snow crunches underfoot. But it is also true that for most of this month the days have been dazzling, with sunsets that flash like crystal. And when night comes on, it comes with such a dark beauty it thrills the soul to see moonlight spilling on all that white.“Do you believe this? It’s like Antarctica!” I called to a stranger whose path crossed mine outside the hardware store. “No, silly; it’s like Vermont!” she laughed back, I guess because my reaction was so typical: all too often after a big storm we panic, convincing ourselves that no snows like these have ever fallen and that we will never again feel the soft moist earth.That’s when it’s time to turn to those who are best at observing Nature. I turn to Robert Frost whose poem “The Onset” closes on this hopeful note.
I know that winter death has never tried
The earth but it has failed: the snow may heap
In long storms an undrifted four feet deep
As measured again maple, birch, and oak,
It cannot check the peeper's silver croak;
And I shall see the snow all go down hill
In water of a slender April rill.”
I like to read the lines once and then go back and read them again out loud. Their rocking iambic beat comforts me as much as the words and reminds me of what I already know: that nothing stands still in Nature really, and even the bitterest winters give way at last to spring.
(Not our yard. This is nothing compared to ours.)
