Winter Walking
This week we have had a winter storm in our neck of the woods. Compared to many places in the US, we didn’t see too much snow accumulation. What we generally get in our area is ice. There is always the discussion in our household- to shovel the sidewalk immediately, once the snow has come down or to wait until afterwards especially if sleet and freezing rain come later? We have tried both ways. If the snow is removed and then the rain freezes on the clear walk, it is slick as a smelt. If there is a crust of ice on top of snow, generally one can stomp, break the ice and have some traction with the snow underneath but it is more difficult to shovel with all the snow/ice/snow/ice layers.
Needless to say, this weather has caused me to think about winter.
Last week, January 25th was Robert Burns night in Scotland. I've been reading some of his poems. He was quite prolific- over 500 poems/songs in his 37 years of life. He was a popular and famous poet during his lifetime in addition to being a farmer, father to fourteen children and by all accounts, a ladies’ man. (“His biographer, DeLancey Ferguson, had said, it was not so much that he was conspicuously sinful as that he sinned conspicuously.”*1)
I thought his poem about winter to be fitting for the cloudy and cold weather we have been experiencing. While the end of the poem seems depressing, it does remind me of how weather can determine our moods. No surprise that the blues can be equated with the darker, grey-type days.
What I like about the poem is Burns’ honesty. In some ways it reminds me of the honesty of the psalmist’s heart although Burns was not a religious man. There are times when we feel that life and even the weather is conspiring against us. We have a feeling of resignation when it is a “joyless winter-day.” I was somewhat disappointed that Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow yesterday- six more weeks of winter. My internal “ugh” sounded like a winter dirge.
Winter: A Dirge
by Robert Burns
The wintry west extends his blast,
And hail and rain does blaw;
Or, the stormy north sends driving forth
The blinding sleet and snaw:
While tumbling brown, the burn comes down,
And roars frae bank to brae;
And bird and beast in covert rest,
And pass the heartless day.
The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast,
The joyless winter-day,
Let others fear, to me more dear
Than all the pride of May:
The tempest's howl, it soothes my soul,
My griefs it seems to join;
The leafless trees my fancy please,
Their fate resembles mine!
Thou Pow'r Supreme, whose mighty scheme
These woes of mine fulfil,
Here, firm, I rest, they must be best,
Because they are Thy will!
Then all I want (O, do Thou grant
This one request of mine!)
Since to enjoy Thou dost deny,
Assist me to resign.
The poem was copied into Burns's Commonplace Book, with the following remarks:
As I am what the men of the world, if they knew such a man, would call a whimsical mortal, I have various forms of pleasure and enjoyment which are in a manner peculiar to myself, or some here and there such out-of-the-way person. Such is the peculiar pleasure I take in the season of Winter more than the rest of the year. This, I believe, may be partly owing to my misfortunes giving my mind a melancholy cast; but there is something even in the
Mighty tempest, and the heavy waste,
Abrupt, and deep, stretched o'er the buried earth.
which raises the mind to a serious sublimity favourable to everything great and noble. There is scarcely any object gives me more -- I do not know if I should call it pleasure -- but something which exalts me -- something which enraptures me -- to walk in the sheltered side of a wood, or high plantation, in a cloudy winter day, and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees and raving over the plain. It is my best season for devotion; my mind is rapt up in a kind of enthusiasm to Him, who, in the pompous language of the Hebrew bard, 'Walks on the wings of the wind.' In one of these seasons, just after a train of misfortunes, I composed these lines.*2
During the recent snowfall, my husband and I took a walk in the wintry weather. Once bundled up, it was nice to traverse through the hushed streets and to see the forgotten-to-take-down Christmas lights twinkling through the layer of snow on the bushes. It felt good to move around even if it was a grey day. I like Burns explanation of his poem and his feeling “enraptured” in his walk. It is almost as if the walk was able to help him cope through his train of misfortune. I know that our walk helped us get out of our heads and give us some perspective.
Burns’ poem reminds me of the Psalm (Psalm 30:5), “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” All of us this year have probably experienced some type of nightly weeping: deaths, illnesses, losses and general sadness. It might seem to us that we are experiencing a train of misfortunes too- one disaster after another. We might feel that the “night” of this pandemic will never be over and that a new day will never dawn. Yet, morning does follow night. Joy does come after weeping. Spring comes after winter.
What about you? How are you this winter day? Experiencing a train of misfortune? Feeling blue? Feeling grey? Having a “joyless winter-day”? What can you do to turn it around? What brings you joy? What can you do to gain perspective of life? How does the natural world shape your mood?
In the meantime, embrace the day- whatever it brings. And if all else fails- take a winter walk.
*1https://poets.org/poet/robert-burns
*2The Poetical Works Of Robert Burns
Copyright 1910
Ward, Lock, and Co., Ltd https://www.litscape.com/author/Robert_Burns/Winter_A_Dirge.html
