Field Notes—

Winter’s Resignation

By Curtiss Clark

South of here, winter was piling on, adding another foot of snow to mid-Atlantic states that cried uncle weeks ago. It was snowing here, too — hard at times. But on a foray into the worst of it last Friday, carrying trash from the house to the barn, I felt the season slip.

Winter in New England is brawny and bare knuckled, but its reputation stands firmly on January and February. In March the season can put on a furious show, but this is the month it goes weak in the knees. Daylight Saving Time and the vernal equinox will administer a technical knockout in a couple of weeks, but standing there last week in a white-out squall, I could feel that for this year, winter’s cause is lost.

It was both warm and wet, and the road out front was black. Heat in the asphalt pushed back against the snowstorm and was winning. Even the least of living things were pushing back. Tender green shoots of snowdrops raised tight translucent buds like clenched fists through the snow. The Lenten rose was forming new blossoms beneath a layer of ice. And olive drab finches were pushing gold from the alchemy of their little electric hearts up through the down on their breasts.

In that moment, the knot of winter vigilance that keeps me upright and moving forward in the first ten weeks of the year loosened in my chest. No matter what the accumulation, none of the inconvenient mess of this season is going to amount to much from here on out. Winter is all about resignation at this point.

As one with enough seasons behind me to sense a growing weakness in my own knees, I feel both a kinship and affection for winter in March. The winter of 2010 has become a hoary old man, cranky and disagreeable as he cedes power to the upstart April. But the season can still take your breath away with its beauty, as wet snow clings to every forgotten and unappreciated shape in the world before it quickly melts away.

Resignation can be a good thing, especially when you get to retire to the soft and scented lair of April, May, and June.

(An archive of this and more than 60 other “Field Notes” essays is available online at www.field-notebook.com.)