Winter Lies Too Long
Thought of the Day:
“Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen.”
Willa Cather
Thinking Outside of the Box:
My daughter tells me that there is an scientific explanation for the fact that winter lasts forever in the country. Willa Cather is from Nebraska, by the way, and I just happen to live in Nebraska. I love Nebraska but winter? I could do with a bit less.
Anyway, back to my precocious 15 year-old. She says the scientific reason is that cities generate heat and power and the lack of people out here in the boondocks contributes to the feeling of winter going on and on and on… you get the idea. But she is going to be a meteorologist, so that might work for her. I am at the time of my life that I really hate being cold. Fiji is looking pretty good right now.
But, some people like winter. In fact, they prefer it. Andrew Wyeth said, “I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure in the landscape . . .” You can feel the skeleton of the world during winter. Everything else is stripped away, waiting with an inhaled and held breath to discover the secrets of spring.
Perhaps winter is not the end but just the pause.
Just think about it.
Some Last Thoughts:
“There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons–
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes—”
Emily Dickinson
“Every mile is two in winter.”
George Herbert
“There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you…. In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.”
Ruth Stout
“Spring, summer, and fall fill us with hope; winter alone reminds us of the human condition.”
Mignon McLaughlin
“Antisthenes says that in a certain faraway land the cold is so intense that words freeze as soon as they are uttered, and after some time then thaw and become audible, so that words spoken in winter go unheard until the next summer.”
Plutarch
Technorati Tags: quotes, quotations
1 Comment