Nature's Wisdom Winter, 2007 Vol. 5 Issue 4
by Sarah Anne Edwards
"I don't worry about tomorrow. Find out a mile on down the road." Bo BiceLessons of Winter: Patience
To Be as the Ducks
Winter on this mountain is my favorite time of year. Most people I know find that difficult to understand. A few years back it would have been difficult for me to understand too. A desire to flee from Winter was, among other reasons, why we moved from Kansas City to Southern California, where there was no Winter.Now the very reason I wanted to escape it is the reason I love it.
Take today. It’s snowing again. It’s a blustery snow, whipping through the meadow on a whistling wind, swallowing our mountain in its breath as it drifts sideways, shrouding the trees under dark, low clouds. We've had many snows this year, each one reminding me again why Winter has become my favorite time of year. It is stunningly beautiful, of course. Magical. Breath-taking. But that’s just the wrapping paper of my love for Winter.
When I lived in Kansas City, Winter was to most an irritating inconvenience. It got in the way of our getting where we needed to go. It clogged the streets, caused terrible accidents, messed up our clothes, hair and shoes, kept us from getting to work on time, and turned the city a filthy dirty brown. Oh, how the whole city yearned for Spring. We just couldn't wait for Winter to pass and how we did moan and groan until it did.
Only kids were delighted with snowy Winter days. They got out of school. A Snow Day meant sledding, making snow men and snow angles, stuffing snow down your best friend's coat, getting covered from head to toe in crusty snow and licking if off the finger tips of your mittens before tracking it into the house to melt in puddles on the kitchen floor. Then, it was hot chocolate and cinnamon toast to warm you up.
Now, that was a treat! For the kids, yes, but for the parents, no. For them it was a headache. They didn’t get a Snow Day. They had to arrange child care, clean up slippery wet floors, risk getting to work without sliding off the road or being rear-ended, put in a full day’s work and struggle home in the dark through treacherous rush hours.
But Winter is quite different here in the mountains. Here, if we’re smart, we all have Snow Days. Here we get snowed in, or if we’re not smart, snowed out. Here we get a reprieve from having to be anywhere. Here we get to accept that we can’t always be in charge of where we go or when we get there, and perhaps best of all, the chance to learn, if we will, that we don’t need to.
We can learn to be as the ducks.
Every morning out my office window I see the ducks on the pond below our house. They are local ducks: Mallards, Koots, a large goose with a broken beak and an occasional visiting Wood Duck. Generally they don’t go anywhere in the Winter. They stay here no matter how inhospitable the weather becomes. For them Winter is the waiting time. They wait in a small circle of water as the edges of the frozen pond creep toward them, shrinking the perimeter of their world ever-smaller hour by hour. There they wait. Just as the hawk waits on the tree branch above, surrounded as it is now in fog and snow. Neither of these neighbors are moaning and groaning or pacing and fluttering about impatiently because they can’t go anywhere. They're not going anywhere. And don't seem to be that concerned about when they'll be able to. They raise nary a feather to “overcome” the weather. This is the waiting time. They are patient.
And I am becoming patient too. Because I must. Today, for example, my husband was to attend a meeting in town. Tomorrow we have doctor appointments and plan to have a birthday dinner with a friend in the city. Will we make either of these events? We don’t know. The roads are slick and dangerous. They may be worse as the hours pass. The highway could be impassable. It could be closed at any moment. We must wait.
But we modern humans are not a people who take well to not knowing or to
waiting. We are an impatient lot for the most part. We don't like to have our plans and schedules disrupted or our goals and dreams thwarted. We are rarely as at ease with uncertainty as the ducks on our pond. We tend to fret and worry. What if we can't get out today? What if we can, but then can't get back? Will we be able to reschedule our appointments anytime soon? How will our friend feel if we can't be with her for her birthday?
But as I watch the ducks, I have to ask myself, why do we think we must go somewhere in snowy Winter weather? Why do you need to drive or fly anywhere when nature has taken over the streets and the skies? Why do we dress in clothes and shoes that don’t like snow? Why must you know when the storm will be over? Won’t time tell?
We seem to prefer our mysteries to come in the form of movies and books. But here on this Winter-white mountain, it becomes clear life itself is the most intriguing of all mysteries. The most exciting drama of all. Each year I've become less likely to miss this point. Each year it becomes easier to accept not knowing what lies ahead. Each year I grow more comfortable with waiting. What was once inconvenience seems more like a blessed relief now. What a joy! I can stop fighting to carve out what I think I must do from life's clouds, fog, rain or snow and just enjoy it instead. During the year to come, should I once again forget this lesson, Winter will return to remind me.
I realize now there is no fleeing from Winter in this broadest sense of the Waiting Time … not even in Southern California. There are seasons for doing. But there are also seasons of waiting. In these Waiting Times, there is only a need for being. We needn't hurry such times along and turn our world into a snarled, dangerous, dirty brown. If we’re patient, it’s simmering magic will melt away and leave the world, perhaps not just how we would have imagined it, but all new, fresh, clean and bright.
As I write this, the snow has become so thick I can barely see the ducks or the hawk outside my window. But I know they are there, just as we are here, peacefully waiting.
Late Winter Blessings of Patience,
Sarah
