learning to love winter

When I was a child I thought that the only season worth loving was summer. I have no idea where this came from, but I remember feeling cheated that my birthday was 9 days into autumn instead of being earlier in the summer season.

Now I still love summer but I so love the other seasons too. In fact, these days, I prefer the gentleness of autumn and spring to the harshness of summer and winter in Australia. Although this week, you would be hard pressed to think of our winter as harsh. Today, it is warm and sunny and the air has barely a whisper of chill in it. Nothing like the winters that I experienced growing up in the country town of West Wyalong.

As a child, when I woke in winter, I would always look out the window to see if there had been a frost. I would be so excited if the grass was white, Hooray, this would make the mile and half walk to school an exciting adventure. Dressed in my blue uniform, woollen jumper and long black socks, I would pick up my small brown globite suitcase to walk to school with my brother and sister.

Blue blue sky and bright sunshine belied the freezing cold air. Our breath turned white as we laughed and talked. We pretended that it was smoke and we tried to blow rings like we had seen our parents do at parties after a few drinks.

But that wasn't the best bit, no, it was the crisp ice encasing the grass or covering the tiny puddles that were most fun. We would race ahead to be the first to put a shiny, freshly polished black shoe onto the ice and hear it crackle and snap. Sometimes we had to be quick because as the sun rose in the sky, it melted the ice and the satisfying sound was not there any more.

When I was a teenager and staying with friends on their farm, I would love being called out to help with animals in the frosty dawn. Rugged up with scarves, beanie and thick coat, feet encased in woolly socks and boots, I thrilled to the feeling that every part of my body was warm except my face. The chilly wind made me feel alive as it caressed my face and nose .

A few years ago, when we did a bushwalk in the New England National Park in winter, it was bitterly cold. As the track turned a corner we were rewarded with a waterfall, completely frozen in time. We stood silent and in awe at the majesty and beauty of the ice which had frozen mid leap from rock to rock. I couldn't believe it, here was my childhood dream magnified a hundredfold.

Today, I give thanks for winter, the chance  to walk briskly in the fresh air, to snuggle under the doona and sleep more soundly, and all the while to lay dormant waiting for the bud of spring to arrive.

frost in the country 2001