January 13: "The Dead of Winter," Old Chestnut, Blizzard

Billy Collins remembers . . .

The Dead of Winter

by:  Billy Collins

We will all die

in one month or another.

Many of the above

left us in December

while others will stay on

to see in the new year.

Collins is taking that old chestnut (the dead of winter) quite literally in this poem.  He's talking about people who have died in the cold heart of December.  The actual cliché, however, simply refers to that time of winter that's most lacking in life or activity.  When everything is buried in dark and cold and snow and ice.  

I suppose the deadest time of winter would probably be around the Winter Solstice (December 21st), when daylight is in short supply and night (and snow) is abundant, at least in my part of the world.  My whole life, I've heard people say "I'm buried!" when a big snowstorm unleashes itself.  As a morbid kid with a death fixation, I always pictured icy graves in the dead of winter.  Bodies encased in sepulchers of snow.  Like Poe, I've always nursed a mortal fear of being buried alive.  

Well, the dead of winter arrived in my neck of the woods today.  It roared into town like a locomotive.  When I opened my front door this morning, the snow was drifted up to my chest, I could barely see my neighbor's house across the street.  And there really wasn't a street--just a plane of thick white.  Sustained winds of 30 and 40 miles per hour, with gusts approaching 50.  I wouldn't have been surprised to see a herd of wooly mammoths lumbering by.

Now, if you choose to live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, expect blizzards.  They are inevitable.  That doesn't mean you have to like them.  But most Yoopers take pride at staring into the hungry maw of winter without blinking, myself included.  I don't enjoy icy cyclones, but I know they are the price I pay for living in a place so near the shores of an inland arctic sea.  And there is something wondrous when you witness the real fury of winter.

That is exactly what I witnessed today.  All day.  And I shoveled and shoveled and shoveled.  Then I trudged down to my sister's house (the one who recently fractured both of her wrists) and shoveled some more.  In between all that shoveling, I took ibuprofen and napped.  

I can now say, after more than 24 hours of whiteouts and snow removal (actually, it was more like snow relocation), that it is NOW the dead of winter in the Upper Peninsula.  Everything and everyone is submerged under dunes of white. 

For those of my disciples who've never experienced a real snow event, there is one particular fact that isn't widely known:  snowstorms are practically silent.  Even the wind is muted.  The scientific explanation for this phenomenon is fairly simple.  When snow accumulates, it acts as a sound absorber, much like sound tiles in a recording studio.  So, even when a blizzard is raging around you, the world is silent as the grave for the most part.

It feels like the dead of winter right now.  Nothing is moving.  No sounds.  Just deep, deep white and cold.

Saint Marty is ready to settle down for a long winter's nap.