Thaw

While northern Europe is suffering under a deep freeze, we've had two weeks of unseasonably warm weather in upstate New York. The highs have reached well into the 50s F, even the low 60s. Yesterday the sun beckoned. I declared a personal San Lunes (Saint Monday) holiday and spent the entire morning outside.

There are puddles and muck everywhere from two recent snowmelts. It still freezes overnight, so a thin coat of ice covers the puddles. Freeze-and-thaw circles are scribbled on the surface of the water. Still-vibrant fall leaves float as if trapped in resin.

Early February is much too early for the Great Thaw. (Punxsatawney Phil can tell you that.) I'm enjoying the ease of getting around this winter. But I feel a little un-easy about it as well. Is the warm weather a result of climate change or just a normal climate fluctuation? (Scientific American reports that the immediate cause of the dry, warm winter is the strange behavior of the jet stream.) 

Whichever it is, I know we need a return of colder temperatures and more snow. Fruit trees need a certain amount of cold days to maintain their period of dormancy, essential for spring flowering. Plants and our reservoirs need a good solid snowpack for the snowmelt in the spring. Animals are affected by a mild winter as well. They come out of hibernation early, hungry at a time when food sources are scarce. This coming summer we may see an increase in mosquitoes and deer ticks because of the warm winter. 

And spiritually? I have come to rely on a cold, snowy January and February to do a little emotional hibernating of my own. I read; I meditate; I stew about issues great and small. It's sometimes an insular and painful period. But it's a spiritual requirement for introverted me, a sort of emotional fattening that prepares me for a more gregarious spring and summer. I wonder what sort of emotional climate I'll look forward to without it?

**You may notice from the highly processed photos that I've been playing around with Photoshop lately. I like unedited and gently touched photos. But I wanted to experiment with enhancing my photos to more clearly convey nature's emotional impact on me, to express its poetry as I receive it. Please check out Helena Cooper's photography for some stunning examples of how processing--and of course her clear eye and sharp focus on color and pattern--can render a photograph like an abstract and deeply emotional painting.