A Writer in Winter

The silence I hear outside right now is due to a muffling effect; there are several inches of snow already, it's been falling fast since early evening, and there could be a foot of it by tomorrow. This is shaping up to be a repeat of the big snowstorm of two weeks ago, which had nearly finished melting off as of today. We've had almost all our winter near the end of the season; spring is just over two weeks away.

Naturally, a writer should be at home in any kind of weather. No matter the climate, the heck with the season, anything is potential material--in theory, anyway. Bad weather provides a golden opportunity to think, read, write, look through your drawers, make hot tea, and twiddle your thumbs. Failing inspiration, you can always bake bread, make soup, practice yoga, give yourself a spa treatment, or dance to zydeco in your living room. But even the most stoic of writers needs fresh air at some point, and that's not easy with a foot of snow on the ground and temperatures in single digits.

Over the last few days, I've been able to go for walks, though it hasn't been loads of fun since the post-storm landscape has involved a lot of sludge and standing water, not to mention persistent icy patches. Nothing, however, that you couldn't get around, if you really wanted to and weren't averse to mud. And it was nothing compared to the day I hiked through the park when the snow was still deep--and hiking really is the word. That turned out to be more exercise than I'd bargained for.

It was a couple of Sundays ago, and the temperature was mild enough that an hour's walk didn't involve the risk of hypothermia. I was feeling the need to stretch my legs, having been unable to do so since the previous weekend, so I pulled on my boots and crunch, crunch crunched my way up the street. At that point, we'd had several days of melting, but the snow was still half a foot or more deep in places. It wasn't so much that it was icy but that it was like walking through sand--just difficult to get anywhere. Needless to say, there was hardly anyone out. The path was hidden under snow, though a few people before me had somehow managed to find it and blaze a very sketchy trail.

I slipped and slid around as best I could, trying to stay on the path when I could see it. The air was refreshing, and the wintry scene pretty enough, if a little gray--though I'd much rather it had been summer. It took me half again as long to do the walk as it normally does. I ran into even more difficulty two-thirds of the way around when I came to a stretch where the snow was undisturbed by anything except a single bicycle track. Determined to finish, I struggled on. What I really needed were snowshoes, but lacking that, I relied on native stubbornness. I had three things in mind: 1. what a good workout it was 2. that I was possibly making it easier for someone who might come along later and 3. how fast I was going to get into my down slippers when I got home.

The long and short is that I did make it through the untrod territory and eventually around the whole circuit. I didn't realize how hard I'd been working until I got back onto an actual (mostly clear) sidewalk that allowed for a normal gait; ordinary walking suddenly felt like floating, the easiest thing in the world. I stepped into some muddy water at the end of my street and managed to get my feet wet, but since I was almost home, it didn't matter. I pulled my boots off right inside the door, put on my slippers, and thought about dinner. I was also thinking that I'd never have gone on that walk if I'd known how uncongenial it was going to be, but now that it was over, I felt pretty virtuous.

From what I hear, this week's winter blast will be followed by relatively mild temperatures next week, so maybe we'll have a faster melt-off this time and I won't have to make another deep-snow trek. We'll see how it goes. Yoga and living room dance sessions are great as far as they go, but writers need to walk, too. I don't know if this is universally true, but I suspect it might be. I won't say I do some of my best thinking while walking, because I've done my best thinking in all sorts of situations, but putting one foot in front of the other does seems to jar things loose sometimes, in more ways than one.