The Winter of 2014

by Rosalind Foley on 03/09/14

Brr. Last year I never took my heavy coat from the closet. In the part of the country where I live we aren't used to ice and snow. Here, January and February may bring a few shivery days, but nothing, usually, like the bitter cold of this year, much less the brutal and deadly storms farther north.

Accustomed to a green view almost year round, I've inwardly bemoaned my brown frost-bitten lawn. A visitor's remark caused me to look at the world a little differently. He'd noticed how much more could be seen and heard with the absence of foliage on what Andrew Wyeth liked to call "the bare bones of the landscape."

Since then I have spotted an eccentric geodesic dome of a house set back in the woods and wondered what it would be like to live there. And, seeing a flutter of male cardinals, I realized how much more vivid their scarlet feathers appear when the background is muted.

A highway runs near my house, linking families and commerce and who knows what. Observing the traffic from the warmth of my home, I pondered on the people in those passing vehicles, driving at all hours in every kind of weather to transport our produce and gasoline and supplies, to respond to accidents, to transfer patients to specialty hospitals. Some are on their way to jobs we never hear about but that benefit us in ways we'll never know. Each one has a story, a life. It's important to remember that.

To all those survivors of winter and drivers of snow plows and rescue vehicles, I salute you.