Halfway Between Winter & Spring

LIving in Place

Halfway Between Winter and Spring.

February second, celebrated around the world as Groundhog Day, Candlemas, Imbolc, St. Brigid’s Day (among others), occurs as the approximate halfway between Winter and Spring.

On February second this year, the moon floated in the inky west as the sky faded to pastels in the east as I headed to work. The temperature was minus 5 with an hour and half to sunrise.

First thing: start a fire in the wood stove. Here in the north country, there’s a saying, “Half your wood and half your hay, you should have at Candlemas Day.” I don’t keep hay-eating animals on the homestead, but I do heat with wood, and I had burned half the supply in the storage crib. This is just one sign that we’re halfway between the solstice and the equinox, between the astronomical turn from one season to another.

First thing: start a fire in the wood stove.

Another sign is the return of the light. While the sun is still sleepy in the morning, not rising until after seven in my part of Vermont, it stays up past five in the afternoon. We have almost two-and-a-half hours more daylight now than in December. With snow on the ground, sunlight can be blindingly bright. After lunch, I don dark glasses, strap on my snowshoes, and head into the woods with Leo, the dog.

It’s been a few days since the snow erased the landscape. Since then, the denizens of the forest have been recording the drama of their lives on the clean pages of snow. Leo and I follow a deer highway up an old logging road. Well, I follow the road; Leo runs every which way, sticking his nose deep into the snow, running after smells and sounds well beyond my senses. I do hear a stream thrumming under the snow, a kind of music arising from the subnivean world.

Even frozen, the river keeps running.

A few days before, Tim and I ventured out on the frozen river. In places where there’s open water, we see just how thick the ice is—eight inches—but the water keeps running.

On my walk into the woods, I find birch tree seeds and catkin scales scattered across the snow like nutmeg shaken on frosting—another sign that the tide has turned toward spring.

The temperature has risen to thirty degrees—almost shirtsleeve weather. I pull off my hat and unzip my light shell; snowshoeing uphill is hot work. I love these glory days of winter, when we have deep snow, warm temps, and a bluebird sky. And in good years, more snow.

Historically, February and March are the months for most snowfall. Okay by me.

I love brittle winter nights with celestial lights, deep snow reflecting bright sunlight, the sense of the world’s heart beating underground while the woods rest, waiting for spring.

Spring will come. Now is the time for winter.

Author Deborah Lee Luskin & Reviving Artemis