Being Ready For Winter

            One last cut of hay, apples fall from tired trees. Leaves color and drop, a hard frost kills. The sun goes, the cows come in, a hard rain falls.

            Scholars say in northern Europe, in medieval times, in some rural communities, humans hibernated. Harvests were thin, there was no light, the bleakness could not be cut with small wood fires. So people slept, waking maybe once or twice a day to gnaw on some stale bread or sip thin soup. The darkness, the cold, the death outside, was all too much to wake for. 

            We do not hibernate in Vermont as fall fades. Yes, we drive to work in the dark and drive home in the dark and pack on some insulating layers as the cold descends. We sit in the kitchen in the late afternoon and wonder if it is bedtime. We eat more. A lot more. But for many of us winter is, simply put, why we are here. 

We are not going to sleep it through. It can be annoying and difficult – a driving January rain settles in worse than a bad marriage – but it can be the best experience life can offer. If that same rain falls out of the sky not as rain but as dry flakes of snow we experience Nirvana. Just today people hiked our mountain and skied the thin, wet snow blanketing the ground.

            January, February, March roll in and we watch the air like children of the Aztecs, maybe even willing to sacrifice to the Gods of Cold and Low Pressure if not a child then at least an annoying rooster. Our mountains are temples to these Winter Gods. We take to the outside for dwindled hours of daylight with zeal. Ah, the mountains.

            Winter opens up the landscape. No need for trails to find our way, no bugs to annoy and no other people clambering around. With a backcountry or split-board set-up, a good backpack, some sweet tea in a strong thermos and a good sense of where we are, the wilderness in winter is like nothing else. There is a quietness and joy to being in the woods in January, in the deep cold, in the sharp monochromatic light, essentially cut off and alone, Jack London like. And the fact that it can kill you makes it a bit more interesting.

            The pace of winter life slows and is somehow very Seventeenth Century. Warm homes host small parties, big meals feature roast meats and vegetables with hot bread buttered thickly, wood fires crackle and warm cold hands, good whiskies take the edge out of things. We drift from house to house, from party to party, and but for a lack of horse drawn sleighs and death from common infection, it is not so different from olden times.

            Of course it is important to be ready for winter, starting with the car. Windshield wipers as thick as Japanese war swords, snow tires spiked with taps or wrapped in chains, a blanket or two in the trunk, jumper cables, windshield-washing fluid laced with de-icer and a dog to keep the occupants warm if stuck are all essential. A salt-coated age-old F-150 driven down to the City shows immediately where it is from; marks the owner (and rots the car). But preparing our vehicles is not the only chore.

            Laying in firewood is a sure sign winter is coming. For us this means moving the cordwood from the barn to the porch, where we stack it as deep and high as we can.  The process reminds me of the opening scenes of the old German U-Boat film Das Boot, where the troops on the sub fill every nook and cranny with food and drink.  I could fit nearly two cords of wood on the porch. But. Rules have been made. I cannot block the windows to the kitchen. This allows us to capture the feeble winter light. I must leave room on the porch for a few chairs for the odd day when we can sit out with our coffee. I must leave an alleyway for the dog.

            By the end of October, by now in other words, I should have two full rows of dry wood stacked and ready to go. I am almost there.

            We buy much of our winter’s meat from neighbors brave enough to raise and slaughter livestock. A freezer in the basement fills in fall with chicken and cow. We did a winter share from a regional CSA for a long time, but I just can’t eat that much damn parsnip. 

             It makes me wonder how I would have done back in the day, back when all of our food would have come either from our own home or from the neighborhood. No bananas, no oranges. Lots of parsnip, thin soups, stale bread.

            Until the last century winter was not a time when the woods became a playground. Winter was a time to get through. I would have hibernated.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2013 David Rocchio