This week's word hails from the Old English winter (plural wintru) meaning "the wet season". That may seem odd, but winter is usually the wettest season of the year. There are a few contenders for the word's Proto-Indo-European (PIE) origins, the most popular being *wend- and *wed- meaning "wet". Others include the PIE *wind- meaning "white", and *gheim- meaning winter or cold. The last forms part of chimera and hibernate, also the name of mightiest mountains on earth, the Himalayas.
Whether or not the season involves snow and icy temperatures or just a hatful of rain, most cultures on island earth have a word for it, and it has a singular place in our thoughts, dancing in a stronger light than its other, more moderate kin. Those of us who live in the north tend to predicate our activities in spring, summer and autumn on making ready for the long white season.
For the Celts, winter began at Samhain (October 31) and ended on Imbolc (February 1), when springtime arrived. The Winter Solstice on or about December 21 marked the shortest day and longest night of the year, and it was a rowdy celebration with much boozy merrymaking. From that day onward, the light of the sun would return, a little more every day until the Summer Solstice in June. The legendary King Arthur was believed to have been born on the Winter Solstice, and Druids sometimes refer to the Winter Solstice as Alban Arthuan ("The Light of Arthur").
Hardy northerners that they were, the Norse knew all about winter. They counted their years in winters and thought the world would end after the mightiest winter (the fimbulvetr) of them all. Their beliefs, compiled in the 13th century Icelandic Edda, contain a wealth of oral material from much earlier sources, and the collection is the main source of everything we know about Norse literature, beliefs, customs, deities and creation mythologies. One of these days, I will work my way through the Edda again, and doing it in winter seems appropriate.
It all comes down to cosmic balance. We owe the lineaments of our existence in the Great Round to a tilt in the earth's axis as it spins merrily in space. When winter reigns here in the north, the happy lands south of the equator are cavorting in summer, and I cling tenaciously to that thought in January. Somewhere in the world, it is warm and sunny, and sentient beings are kicking up their heels in the light.
Winter gifts us with the most brilliantly blue skies of the year by day, the most spectacular stellar expanses by night. There is nothing to compare with the sun shining through frosted trees on a cold morning. with the sound of falling snow in the woods, with clear nights when the stars seem so close one can almost reach up and touch them. Winter star gazing is a chilly business, but I would not miss it for anything.
When winter beckons, I ponder moving further south, but it isn't going to happen. Instead, I pile up books and music and accumulate tea. I stir curries, make bread and stews, ponder the ranks of jams and pickles in the household larder. I ready boots, snowshoes and skis, for treks in the woods. In foul weather, our rambles are brief, but Beau and I will be taking them, together every step of the way.
There is comfort in knowing that the winter fields and forests of the eastern Ontario highlands will remain long after I have gone on, their snows unmarred by the clumsy footprints of this old hen and her canine companion. To know the north woods, one has to wander through them in winter, trace the shapes of the sleeping trees with eyes and lens, listen to snow falling among them, perhaps become a tree herself.
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