Endings and Beginnings

Today is the second day in a row that the pond has been completely iced over. And though most of the Saturday night snow has melted, you can see patches here and there in the neighborhood.

I’ve put all of my summer clothes away and brought out my warm winter sweaters, fleece, and turtlenecks. And on my walk Sunday morning I wore my winter coat, a hat, gloves, and winter boots (though the boots were not really necessary, I just wanted to wear them).

Sigh… It doesn’t just feel like November — if feels like winter!

Endings and New Beginnings

As the seasons continue to turn from fall to winter, I am reminded once again that life is filled with endings and new beginnings. But the beginning of winter is a hard time for me. Winters are harder to navigate with the cold, snow and ice. And I feel more limited in what I can do and where I can go. Though the land is still beautiful, it’s a different kind of beauty and I miss the company of the wide awake fully leafed out trees.

I wish I could greet this turning towards winter as enthusiastically as I greet the turning towards spring. But I don’t feel at all welcoming to this turn of the wheel of seasons today. So I turn to a beautiful poem by Mary Oliver about no wrong seasons.

Hurricane

It didn’t behave
like anything you had
ever imagined. The wind
tore at the trees, the rain
fell for days slant and hard.
The back of the hand
to everything. I watched
the trees bow and their leaves fall
and crawl back into the earth.
As though, that was that.
This was one hurricane
I lived through, the other one
was of a different sort, and
lasted longer. Then
I felt my own leaves giving up and
falling. The back of the hand to
everything. But listen now to what happened
to the actual trees;
toward the end of that summer they
pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.
It was the wrong season, yes,
but they couldn’t stop. They
looked like telephone poles and didn’t
care. And after the leaves came
blossoms. For some things
there are no wrong seasons.
Which is what I dream of for me.

Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings.