Living in the far north of Minnesota, one might assume the depths of winter would be the hardest time of year. That the -50 degree F windchills during the darkest time of the year would suck the spirit dry. That the first snowfall blanketing October and sticking around in dirty piles until May would banish all desire to leave the house.
But those deep cold days come with a sort of adrenaline when you step out the door. Winter lets you give yourself credit for being a person who choose to live in a place that experiences the blunt force of a harsh, cold winter head on. You fashion a shell around your sense of reason and walk out the door into temperatures that are colder than the North Pole. You shoulder on in your daily routines. You even think, on windchill advisory days, What a great chance to get out skiing. After a while the darkness becomes like a comfortable sweater, lumpy and long, under which your softening body can hide in comfort.
The hardest time, then, comes when the rest of the state is celebrating the onset of spring. It begins around the equinox and worsens around Daylight Savings time, when the longer light gets the folks down south consider the possibility of an evening spent outdoors in a t-shirt. The weekend folks who came up to ski and winter camp in January now stay where they came from, where there are things like lawns and daffodils and grilling out.
This leaves those up north with the muddy, melty expanse of April, when the ski trails begin to falter and melt, but the roads are still caked in ice. It is a season of walking gingerly, of picking your way around puddles of unknown depth in the afternoon, and the next morning slipping across sheer expanses of ice now covering those same puddles.
Instead of providing hope and excitement, the increased hours of light—at least at first—feel like a violation instead of a gift. You are used to eating dinner in the dark and collapsing into the couch afterward, having no reason to move until you move into bed. Now there are expectations of using the increased hours of daylight for good. Five hours of TV after dinner when the sun is still shining just seems sad.
April is the cocoon splitting open. April is re-birthing pains. You feel pressure to awaken. To do things like seek out NEW BEGINNINGS, to BLOOM. To start new things, to dream of summer, to get on board with how the light changes, how it cuts a little sharper.
But instead, what gets tilled up by the fertile possibility of spring (which, up here, is usually still buried under 2 feet of soppy snow) is restlessness. Aimlessness. The start and abandonment of five different projects. A crescendo of clutter. It is difficult to welcome the light, which pushes you out the door to move at time you used to be winding down to numb out on TV or go to sleep. You are frustrated that you’re unable to get out of the funk that the light should be banishing, to clear out the cobwebs that the warmer days should exorcise.
So, when the equinox passes, when the wind’s bite softens to a lick, it becomes necessary to relearn how to walk without the mental and physical armor of protection from the cold. To straighten up. To look around. All of which is still tripped up by a world that remains encased in mud and ice.
You know that your focus is on vacation and trust that it will return. Speaking of vacation, you plan one. To the desert, to the ocean, to Mexico. To Iowa, if that’s the furthest you can get.
You know that you are not the only one driving in circles in town, waiting for something to happen. That you are not the only one starting a hike and being turned back by a weirdness about the light or the air that may be the blooming you’ve heard so much about lately but that in that moment you want nothing to do with.
You walk out in the evenings, at the exact time you are annoyed it is still light out. Fighting resistance with every action, you put on your mud boots and your yak-traks and your winter coat and step out the door. What is first a ten minute walk will become twenty will become those long nightly walks you love to take all summer. Gradually, you’ll stop looking over your shoulder for the extremes that become a comfort in winter. The bite of cold. The blast of wind. Gradually—and take your time —you’ll settle in to the warm, softened days, winter again an impossible idea in the depth of your bones.
Beautiful writing Emily!
So relatable for a fellow Midwesterner!!