This morning I awoke to the first snow of the season. I love the hypnotic magic of watching the snowflakes fall. Unfortunately, that magic disappears the instant I step outside.

Outside, I don’t see the snow drifting weightlessly toward the ground. Instead I feel it against my face, wind-driven, like a thousand tiny ice razors. I feel the cold in my bones, and the moisture against my feet. At first my extremities hurt. Then they go numb and become useless, insensate stumps.

“Why do I live here?” I ask myself every year. And every year, the answer wears a bit more thin.

If I had to sum up my feelings about winter, I’d choose the words of the brilliant Ezra Pound:

Ancient Music

Winter is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm.
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.

Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver,
Damn you, sing: Goddamm.

Goddamm, Goddamm, ’tis why I am, Goddamm,
So ‘gainst the winter’s balm.

Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm.
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.

A parody of the Anglo-Saxon poem, Cuckoo Song

Still … in spite of my distaste for winter, there is something compelling about its desolate beauty:

As always, I’m promising myself that I’ll make the best of it. And I promise to bury my White Pine bonsai in hopes of a spring yet to come.