Winter Musings: Am K'shay Choref

“…. I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity…"
(W. Wordsworth 1770-1850, from Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, 1798)

If you happen to be in the Detroit Area and traveling along Telegraph Rd. on any given Saturday morning, let’s say around 5:00 am, you’d likely see some idiot standing along the side of the road with a thermos in hand, sipping what you would suspect to be whiskey, but is, in fact, 100% Colombian coffee. That idiot is none other than me (look for the gray beret.) On a typical winter weekend morning, for example, I will get up out of bed (or more likely off the sofa), don a fleece-lined jogging suit, wrap a trench coat over that, and walk the mile or so to the corner 7-11 for my daily caffeine fix. I have a new coffee machine in the kitchen and a dependable car in the driveway, but that’s not the point. It’s not about the coffee.

Yeah. I know. I’m a long way off from what’s commonly considered as normal. So what else is new? Though I would rather not have to subsist under such wintry conditions on a permanent or even consistent basis, the occasional severe Arctic blast does little to subdue my normal level of Bohemian enthusiasm. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t like to downhill or cross-country ski, snowmobile, ice-fish, hunt, nor do I plan on climbing Mt. Everest. I’m not the kind of person to seek out super-human tests of mettle or physical endurance, though I have had to run Nature’s gauntlet a few times in the past (with limited success I might add.) That’s not my thing. I just like the feel of Nature at its relatively most intense, though perhaps if only for just a little while. It is enough for me to watch it from within and I have no intention of deliberately trying to fight it.

There are many reasons that I enjoy winter. I like the feel of the cold wind on my face, the ice that builds up in my beard, the fresh cool air in my lungs, the way that everything has to slow down just a little bit, and how the snow muffles the din of city life. I really like the intense cold because those are the days I get the world to myself, since 95% of our local populace stays tucked away inside their homes, drinking hot chocolate (with marshmallows and peppermint schnapps if they’re smart) and wishing for summertime to hurry up and defrost the planet. Extreme weather also tends to bring out those few likeminded lunatics who actually and truly enjoy this kind of weather. The only people you catch outdoors in a blizzard (or any other storm), without a practical or purposeful reason, are those who simply enjoy the feel of it, and on rare occasions I find someone just as mentally unbalanced as I am to stand out in the middle of it and make conversation. Since there are less than a few of such characters in my neighborhood, the streets remain relatively quiet in the early hours; at least more so than usual.

Crime goes way down in the winter, too; the criminals don’t like the cold. My father o’h used to say that there are two times of year when the city is generally safe, the coldest part of winter and the hottest part of summer. “The shkutzim don’t leave the house in winter, and don’t leave the porch in the summer”, he used to say. The cold, snow, wind, and ice also remind me of how so many others, human and animal, live their entire lives under these harsh conditions and fare quite well. It gives us insight into what is viable and what is not. Winter is also the resting period for much of Nature, saving its energy and gathering strength for the impending springtime, like a weightlifter taking deep, relaxing breaths before a competition.

Most importantly, my morning march for coffee in the bitter cold reconnects me with literature and history. The bodily sensations that accompany winter’s barbarity bring to mind the novels of Jack London or the poetry of Robert Service, and I catch myself following Dr. Zhivago across the Siberian Taiga. I think about the defeated legions of Napoleon’s Grand Armée, battered and beaten by the cruel Russian Winter, trudging through waist-deep snow and frozen mud in an attempt to escape their vengeance-bent Slavic pursuers. One shudders to think how horrible that experience must have been; to not have adequate clothing, to not have shelter or warmth, to witness your friends and comrades dying all around you, and to be dogged every step of the way on your retreat by a people who thrive in the conditions that are now hampering the route to home and its long awaited comforts. I am in sympathy with the dissident exiled to the Soviet Gulag, the Jew transported to a frozen death in an unheated cattle car, and the refugee seeking shelter along icy roads covered with the debris of destruction and war. I am reminded of stories from the Alte Chasidim who would cut holes in the thick ice to have a mikvah, or those who sought out sufferingand penance by rolling themselves in snow and ice. I think about the first fatal expeditions to the North and South poles, and those who died ascending the highest peaks. Yeah. That’s what I think about when I am knee-deep in blowing snow and sub-freezing temperatures sipping a 20 oz. cup of 7-11’s finest brew. It’s an opportunity to see history from its most human perspective, and no longer as arbitrary or meaningless dates and places.

All this refrigerated musing eventually leads into a thankfulness and gratitude for not having yet endured those types of hardships that, no doubt, would make any time of year, no matter how temperate the climate, unbearable. For now, I can loiter at this lonely bus stop and watch snowplows, a lone jogger, and the occasional stray dog passing by on it’s way to somewhere else, while knowing full well that in an hour or so I will be able to crawl back into my own cozy berth in relative safety and comfort.

I am again reminded never to lose sight of mankind’s apparent fetish with extremes, be it suffering, war, atrocity, sport, pleasure, or glory, and if a little walk in the wintertime is enough to remind us of how insane things can become when left unchecked, then maybe more of us should be drinking our coffee in a snowstorm. If nothing else, all this pondering of the cold provides a useful distraction from the cold.

“I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy for those who think, and a tragedy for those who feel.” (Sir Robert Walpole 1717-1797)