Show Your Stuff, Winter!

There had been no sign of snow when I put the house to bed, turning down the oil lamps one by one and blowing them out as the flames sank low. Looking forth a moment from the kitchen door, all that I could discover was an overclouded darkness – no wind, no sound, no star. Sometime in the night, however, a howl of wind or sudden and glassy rattle of sleet must have reached me in my dreams for I got up quietly to see how things stood now that a northeast storm had risen in the night.

 

The house was full of the sound of the gale. It was a winter northeaster, furious with wind and snow, and driving down against us from the dark and desolate North Atlantic and a thousand miles of whitecaps and slavering foam. Wailings and whistling cries, ghostly sightings under the latched doors, fierce pushings and buffetings of the exposed walls – thrusts one could feel as a vibration of the house itself – all these had something of their being in the shelter and humanly-beautiful room. United with these, tumultuous and incessant, rose the higher aerial cry of the gale in space above the earth.

 

A pair of windows over the sink face the east and the pond, and these were under the full attack of the storm. Volleys of sleet were striking against them, wild gust by wild gust, and great flakes were sliding down the panes. Every now and then I could hear, even through the wind, the sound which snow makes against glass – that curious, fleecy pat and delicate whisper of touch which language cannot convey or scare suggest.

 

Northern Farm, Henry Beston 1948

We do not live on a farm but I have winterized the koi pond, tucked the goldfish in for the duration, and put up our hand-painted snow stick. Bring it on, Winter.