Winter comes in fits and starts, tenative and unsure of itself. Like a high school freshman, its first advances are clumsy and ill conceived. It’s no wonder, this sun drenched land is the domain of summer. Even in November, hot desert winds rush over the mountains, sucking the moisture from the air and chapping the skin, “red flag warnings” caution us that the fire risk is high, in the last month of fall.
There are those who prefer summer, and it’s natural that they would live here. I wonder sometimes if, like an old god from european mythology, summer is strengthened by the worship of those who inhabit this place. In this age, when science is the most globally revered of all gods, Winter must advance. It cannot disobey the directive that we call the natural order, but Summer is strong here. This is one of its strongholds. A bastion.
When Winter comes to a hostile land, it must first try its opponents defenses. It feints and lunges, and sometimes it batters back a sword, weaves past a shield, and lands a glancing blow. A cool weekend in October grants hope to those of us that long for icier climes, but it simply isn’t to be. Summer rallies, it gathers itself and makes a valiant last stand, pushing back the cold breath of frost, beating it back with sun and fire and those blistering winds.
There is a time in early November when I despair. My coffee is uncomfortably hot in my hands, and if I stand outside for too long sweat beads on my forehead. There’s no pleasure to be found in soup, and nothing but bitterness at the enduring warmth of the sun, it’s rays falling violently from the heavens. Jackets hang in the long shadowed hallway, morosely watching as we pass by, in the swish and rustle of a sleeve I hear the question, “Perhaps tomorrow? Tomorrow…?” And still they sit, and wait, and hope.
Invariably, when it does come, it catches me by surprise. I can never look back and say, “There. There was the moment that winter began.” If such a moment exists, it is too subtle to notice. It isn’t the way of Winter to clobber her enemy, to plunge sword through chest and into heart, ending Summer’s reign in a fount of gore, or a bellow. No, insidious as frost she creeps into joints, into muscle and bone and sinew, and as the days grow shorter and the nights grow colder, the Sun, distracted by her frontal assault, fails to notice. Though the fight is bitter, there is no violence in her victory. The cold triumphs, Summer is frozen in place, and winter, stepping around her vanquished oponent, is.
So it happens, one day, perhaps a day such as today, I walk out of the grocery and as I pass the carts I see a tree, it’s leaves mottled with gold and yellow and red, a final salute to the dying glory of summer. Looking through it’s leaves, I see that the sun is hidden, locked behind a curtain of gray clouds, heavy with the threat of rain. A chill wind may blow, kissing my neck, and the shiver that comes may cause me to hold closer my coffee, to take a drink for warmth and comfort.
That was today at any rate. In that moment, breathing the smell of rain, feeling the fingers of winter across my face for the first time in months, finding comfort in warmth, I realized that she’d won, again. Of course, with the collective population of the entire world believing in the natural progression of seasons, it may have been impossible for Winter to lose. And yet, and yet…if any battleground offered Summer a chance at victory, it would be this place. With the support of these people, these sun worshippers.
Winter is my patron season. Who can write in the heat? No thank you.