In late winter the sun begins to linger on the western hills, rather than dropping quickly out of sight. Every day her arc curves a little higher across the sky. The polar vortex may blow arctic air our way, yet those extra rays of overhead sunlight begin the thaw — lifting the veil of winter that has covered our senses for months.
It is misleading to call this column A Solitary Walker, for I am rarely walking alone. Rather, I am usually in the company of two little brown dogs, my LBDs. Walking in the woods with dogs is comforting yet, at the same time, if they were to run off, it could be very disturbing. However, when the midwinter snows lie deep and soft, and the smells of spring are locked in the frozen ground, there is not much chance of them chasing after fur- or feather-bearing wild things, baying like wild things themselves. Only then can I let them off-leash while I go about my own business of looking.
By late winter, though, things start to change.
It begins with a heavy rainstorm and a sudden break-up of river ice. As sheets of ice melt free and float downstream, they jam up in a shallow or bent place in the river. Randomly, one on top of the other, the ice accumulates like 4-inch-thick slabs of concrete. Pushing against each other like tectonic plates, the blocks lift, resting vertically — the Taconic Orogeny and uplifted Iapetus Seabed demonstrated right here in my own backyard! Water rushes downstream crashing against the ice, reminding me that soon I’ll sleep with my window open — one ear on the lullaby of the river and the other one asleep.
One sunny day the LBDs and I head out to a favorite walk and I notice their little black noses pointing up to the sky, sniffing. Yes, I smell something too — pine needles, birch sap, decomposition and dog poop — smells that I have been, without knowing it, missing for months. It is then, when the smells return and the snow compacts into a sintered, hardened surface that supports them but not me, that the LBDs must return to their leash.
As we walk, I turn my head toward a tufted titmouse gleaning the bark of an ash tree and calling sweeda sweeda sweeda. The repetitive chant proves not all songs sound like songs. Soon, male chickadees will announce territory rights and mating fitness with descending whistles, and the downy and hairy woodpeckers will drum their own songs.
On winter-starved ears, these early bird songs come like an Irish air.
Recently, up a country road, the air felt warmer and wetter. Cold winter air is dry — dry to our skin and dry to any plant attempting photosynthesis. The tree-bark mosses had looked gray and shriveled in the cold, but as meltwater and raindrops ran down the furrows, those ancient rootless plants rehydrated. As the snow melts, rock outcroppings will appear again like old friends. Under hidden overhangs rest Christmas ferns and wood ferns, green throughout the winter and ready to make sugars again as soon as the sun shines. Circles of melt surround tree bases as the boles of trees absorb sun and hold heat. Tiny ecosystems of thaw, where spring is getting a head start.
Searching for anything green to put my eyes on, I realized it may be the colors that I miss most in winter. After October rains ended the last burst of yellow from poplars and tamaracks, the color-sensitive cones in my eyes seemed to crawl off to sleep, allowing the black-and-white night-vision rods to take over. But very soon my cones will awaken again to see yellow twigs of riverine willows against a blue robin-egg sky.
We should be sunning our bodies a little every day for vitamin D synthesis, mineral absorption and all-around good cheer, yet winters here in Vermont are too cold to bare much skin. On a rare, late-winter day, the wind will die down and the sun, hanging around in the west before she moves on to California, sends some true heat our way. I’ll roll up my pant legs and shirt sleeves and sit in the Adirondack chair to soak it in. One of the LBDs will jump on me for a cuddle, blocking the sun. Then the wind will pick up, sending jets of polar vortex air through my hair.
Oh, how the wind does blow in late winter into spring. Nature abhors an imbalance, always seeking to even out the system. Cold, descending air molecules squeeze tightly together in high-pressure systems; they can’t wait to rush out and fill the voids left as warm low-pressure systems rise. Simplified — this is wind. It trims the dying limbs from trees and carries whatever it can across the land to settle somewhere else. Feed bags from down the road find their way across town to my front porch. Leaves from the village green add calcium to my lawn.
The veil of winter blows away to the Southern Hemisphere, where it will be needed as winter begins there.
Micki Colbeck, of Strafford, is an artist, a conservation biologist and a member of the Strafford Conservation Commission. Write to her at mjcolbeck@gmail.com.