Snow whitens the Siskiyous in this view taken from the Ashland end of the Bear Creek Greenway. Winter weather reminds us of our vulnerability, of death and loss, as nature goes through its necessary dormancy before the onset of spring. (Steve Dieffenbacher)"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure in the landscape — the loneliness of it — the dead feeling of winter."
-- Andrew Wyeth,American painter
Iknow this "dead feeling of winter" — the dark days when loneliness and the naked bones of life's fragility stand before me.
When I look out on the Rogue Valley this January, that's the reality I see, although it may be far less stark than the one at Wyeth's farm in Chadds Ford, Penn.
Our winters are nothing like those in the East, but weeks of rain, fog, low clouds and occasional snow, can still make existence here seem limited and tentative. It's easy to become dispirited.
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This winter, I have thought more about death and dying than usual. In the last month and a half, there has been a succession of high-profile deaths in which bad weather played some part — the saga of James Kim trying to find help for his family west of Galice, the death of Charlie Fowler while he was scaling Genyen Peak in China with his climbing partner, who is also presumed lost, and the drama of three Mount Hood climbers pinned down in a storm, one found dead, the others still missing.
Surrounded by January's featureless skies and ominous quiet, nature can seem hostile to hope. By now, most plants are truly dormant, all the leaves that hung on like crisp, curling brown pieces of paper through November and December, blown away into a thick, cold air. Everywhere you look, the world is gray and brown.
It is as if a person were being sealed in, writes poet/novelist May Sarton in "Plant Dreaming Deep," her meditative book about life in rural New Hampshire during the late 1950s and 1960s. When winter comes, she says, it is as if "there will be no escape," bringing a primal "shiver of apprehension."
Yet for her that winter diminishment, even in New England, was not total, but one in which unexpected joys could come. Some days, the clouds would break up to reveal an unearthly light, turning her house into "a ship riding long white slopes of waves." On those days, she felt she was "living in a diamond."
We are all at our most vulnerable in the winter, most at the mercy of the elements, most aware of our mortality, personally and as a species. In this season's gloomiest days, I can never get out of my mind the thought that maybe the season won't turn, maybe the sun will stand still in the sky as the Bible story goes, condemning humanity to extinction.
Yet as strong as these feelings are, I welcome them every winter, because they force me to experience loss as deeply as I experience joy during autumn's splendor.
I see what really matters; I feel more deeply connected to the people I care about and the land around me than is possible in December when the commercial hullabaloo of the holidays masks winter's portents.
In January nature is muted and dour, yes, but also strangely alive. I am far more aware of birds, for instance — especially the scurrying bustle of small ones like nuthatches, juncos, wrens and sparrows suddenly visible in the bare stems of bushes. Seemingly unburdened by winter's short days, they flit with an expectant energy.
Even on the coldest days, there are trees and plants with buds forming for spring's renewal, just waiting for its signal to begin opening.
Everything outside is immediate and intimate. I don't go far to hike this time of year because nature's hush is at my door. On familiar greenway paths amid gestures of bony cottonwoods, maples or ashes, I walk in a skeletal calligraphy of death and silence.
Sarton, who was subject to bouts of depression, wrote that spending her first cold season in New Hampshire was to feel the depths of "anxiety, isolation, the dark side of the moon of solitude."
Yet while there, she also came to realize that the house she loved so much had to contain death as well as life to be true to human experience. She filled it with mementos of her dead parents and friends. She saw how death strangely enriches life even as it seems to diminish it.
She said of one friend's death that all the fragments of his life that had seemed scattered came together at his memorial and she "saw him whole" at last.
Perhaps, that is the lesson of winter — a necessary letting go of life so it can be reconstituted more completely.
The season's pale, incorporeal whispers will regain their rich, colorful voices soon enough, and as in years past, I will welcome those full sounds all the more because of the long stillness that preceded them.
Steve Dieffenbacher is a Mail Tribune page designer/copy editor. You can reach him at 776-4498 or sdieffenbacher@mailtribune.com
