“This is an old-fashioned winter”. That’s what Mom would say if she were still sitting in the window looking out at the snow falling among the regal, leafless maples on her street. She would then reminisce of her childhood on the 3rd of Peel, possibly telling the story about the time when she and her sister got stuck in a snowdrift with the horse and cutter on their way to town one long-ago winter’s day.
The creak and squeak of the snow compressing underneath my boots or beneath the tires of the car takes me back to the winter days of my own childhood. We spent hours on the rink by the school skating and playing hockey or broomball, going home at dusk with baby toes that burned like billy blazes when they warmed up by the fire. I remember the exhilaration of skating on the lake near our home one night when it had frozen skateable (which was a rarity), and the sharp cracks echoing through the night air as the ice shifted. My brother and I would have to shovel the driveway after even more snow fell. He and I also went for long snowshoe treks with our friends. It took practice for me to lift the wide, wooden frame of the snowshoe up and over the adjacent one rather that walking wide, an image that amused my companions. We snowshoed through the boreal bushes and out onto the vast expanse of the snow-covered, frozen lake, the wilderness our playground. In many ways, the winters of childhood offered an outdoor playground that enticed and entertained us almost as much as the warmer days of spring and summer.
The winter of 2025 has lived up to a winter’s reputation. Cold. Snowy. The waning moon rising into the inky blackness of the early morning, arching low across the southerly skies – a sign of the winter months. Prevailing, westerly winds have taken the snow and tucked it up and ’round the fence posts before blowing it on down the lane, much like the hand of a mother smoothing out the skirt of the little girl on her lap. Frost has created art on the old window panes. Toboggan tracks have indented the small hill out front, and a hobbit-like fort has been built in the fence line. On the worn path to the shop, wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow load of wood has been pushed to the house to fill the wood box inside the back door. Much of the stone farmhouse living has happened not too far from the warmth of the fire.
Here on our farm, the winter brings with it a slowing down. Christmas things are put away. The maples are frozen, and the fields are blanketed in snow. There is a dormancy that is soothing. Urgency and hurry are benched, though true to their nature, they are always clamouring to play.
During a recent conversation with my spiritual director, as we turned our eyes to more interiorly landscapes, she at one point said the words “be with the winter”, framing them as a more radical message than doing for doing’s sake. I quickly jotted down the words so as not to forget them. Those are words of blessing to an introvert. They are words of testing to an inner critic.
What does it mean to be with the winter? When I consider the metaphors of winter, they often depict a time of resting, dormancy, and insularity. A healthy checking out, as it were. Letting the darkness soften the edges.*
But then there are those toboggan tracks on the hill and the fort nestled under the low-hanging pine boughs along the fence line. There’s the cut of old skate blades on the ice and the snowshoes waiting to be strapped on. There are walks in the snapping cold. Could it be that being with the winter also designates a certain playfulness? And could it be that that playfulness can act as a percolator for things brewing in the quiet?
A plethora of ill-tidings in our dear world has accompanied these cold days. Then too, there are the griefs and private journeys of trial that wash up on our own shores. We all have our work to do, our lives that invite us to an intentional living. But I wonder, might playfulness amidst the brooding darkness of winter be a radical way too? Playfulness not as glib response but as a deliberate and intentional practice? Can we give ourselves permission to reprieve into play? Follow the lead of the children?
I think again of my mother. Her once-strong and agile body became frail and fragile in her old-age. In spite of that, she retained a spark of playfulness. Some of it was in her quick wit, always keeping us on our toes and providing an overflow of mirth. Some of it was in the tap, tap, tap of the marble held in those precious, buckled fingers chasing another colour of marbles mercilessly around the board. Playfulness is not limited to age, ability, or season in life (neither, apparently, is competitiveness in Marbles! Though she always liked when everyone had a turn at winning).
Wendell Berry’s short poem “Like Snow” came through my feed, and the poignancy in those few lines was settling. There is the work of our lives waiting to be done each day. But maybe into our work, whatever that work may be, we can spoon in a hearty dose of merriment and stir a measure of lightness into our hearts.
Like Snow
~Wendell Berry
Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly,
leaving nothing out.
These winter days are already lengthening, bookended by artistry in the skies that never gets old. This old-fashioned winter, as my mom would say, beckons us to make tracks in the snows. Boot prints and sled tracks. Snowshoes, skis, and snow angels each making their own unique imprint into the white canvas. All of it making our own mark in the snow, just for fun. Yes, we have our work to do and our burdens that we bear, but might we not also heed winter’s playful nudge, don our heavy coats and tuques and head out the door? Let the apricity of the season bring us its unique comfort? It may be that afterwards, once back inside warming by the fire, we can savour stillness and rest from a refreshed stance and with a clearer mind.
* The idea of darkness softening the edges was something I read somewhere, possibly in the book, “Learning to Walk in the Dark” by Barbara Brown Taylor