A Winter’s Tale

February 16, 2026

Another in a series of observations of life as I know it.

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape — the loneliness of it; the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.

- Andrew Wyeth

~~~~~

When I was a kid, living in the Washington DC area, snow was more common. Big crippling blizzards. Does anyone recall JFK’s inauguration? My dad was a doctor and the hospitals put a call out for medical personnel. A big truck picked him up and we saw him 10 days later. The kind of snow event that triggered a phalanx of home room moms calling on a phone tree list. My mother was one such volunteer and we eagerly awaited those early morning calls. No school! Which meant hours of playing outside, making snowmen and snow caves. Snow ball fights. Wet feet. Sadly, just below the Mason Dixson Line, the temperatures rose quickly. Snow melted. And I spent hours in the yard shoveling the remaining snow onto patches of emergent green, hoping to hide any evidence that might reveal melt. I tried to mask the inevitable.

We’re in week 3 of the snowpalooza that fell here in New England. It started with 12-18 inches. Then every Sunday more snow blanketed the drifts and iced asphalt. The glistening surfaces are now clumps of gray. Cranberry bogs and wet lands have heaved large hunks of ice. Ponds have mostly thick, hard surfaces, perfect for skating and ice fishing. The old timers at my coffee shop fondly recall a vivid past, when kids would play ice hockey on quickly created rinks. In some cases, there is a Currier and Ives print-like quality, bright colors against the blinding light. But Mother Nature is not a nurturing soul. She is soulless, in fact. Over the weekend a couple ventured out on the ice on a brackish tributary and it quickly gave way. Their dog was able to scratch its way out, then howled to alert passersby. Beneath winter’s beauty is a dark shadow of menace.

And so today is the dividing line that carves February in half. That inane rodent in Pennsylvania got his prediction right. Winter is here for the foreseeable future, having burrowed into snow banks and made itself comfy. I simply want to go somewhere warm, for just three days. To feel the sun on my back, and be warm again. Fool that I am, I will wish for these cold days in the throes of July’s humidity. The human condition is such that one always wants the polar opposite of what one has. Life as I know it.

Skaters on Long Pond in Harwich, Cape Cod. Circa 1900.