It’s a very cold day today, one of the coldest we’ve had so far this Winter. It leaves a sort of emptiness in the air; you can feel the stillness and expanse on cold days, combined with a certain near-claustrophobia, that feeling of being unsupported by the world, hopping from indoor island to indoor island and trusting that you won’t get stuck on the way.
The stillness doesn’t feel quite like the hibernating, restful stillness we might associate with a “long Winter’s nap”, but rather a sharp stillness which hangs over us, not threateningly but detached, at a distance. The warmth and comfort of green trees and fields is removed from us, and we are left to be still and slow and to wait. On these shortened days, we are permitted brief glimpses of our warming sun, but harshly reflected off the white of the snow.
This is not to say that the spirit of Winter contains hostility, but that it simply is not here to comfort us—though at times, it still may. Winter allows us time to reflect, to replenish soil and ourselves, if we have prepared appropriately; the labor moves from that of production to that of sustenance. The Winter trusts us to persevere, to comfort and sustain each other, giving us a chance to provide for each other through that preparedness. There is still warmth, but we must provide it through our “hearths and hearts”.
When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn’t imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.
— Phil Connors, Groundhog Day