7 posts tagged “winter”
I love walking back across the bridge, looking at the city as the lights come on, so I usually walk on the north side of the bridge as I'm on my way home in the evenings; the view on the other side isn't nearly so beautiful. (During the day, I walk on the south side; it's sunnier.)
This is the view from the other side of the Washington Avenue Bridge; it's what I see when I walk to class in the mornings. You can see a bit of the Shoe Tree there in the corner. It's funny how much that adds to the composition of the photograph. It's beautiful to me—but to anyone else, I think, without without the dangling shoes, it's just a cloudy river.
It's night, January, winter, in Minneapolis. It's cold and crisp outside, beautiful. Even in the heart of the cities, with all their burning, glowing light pollution, there are a handful of stars overhead.
I'm walking across the Washington Avenue bridge, crossing the Mississippi River. Down, below the bridge, lights shimmer—reflected in the moving river, the thin ice that coats the surface here and there. Behind me, to the other side, the Weisman shines in all its reflected aluminum glory. Walking to West Bank, looking at the city ahead—the skyscrapers glow against the night sky.
It's so cold outside that my fingernails hurt,
and all I can think of is how beautiful everything is,
and how much I love Minnesota,
and how happy I am to be here.
I hate to start throwing around superlatives when I have so many friends who like to flatter me with their kind words. If you've somehow missed the memo, words mean much to me, and I tend to carry them with me for a long time. So I cannot tell you the the greatest compliment I've received, but perhaps I could tell you the story of one that made my day.
What is the greatest compliment you've received?
Submitted by Maraschino.
It's December in Minnesota, though you wouldn't guess it. The air is crisp and cool, and the stones of the courtyard are bathed in sunlight—they haven't seen a flake of snow for weeks. The world is yellow and bright—sunshine pours onto the walls of the tall brick buildings and spills down into the courtyard below.
It's a beautiful day, and I'm walking briskly to my final—autumn jacket on my shoulders, a green ribbon in my hair. The black jacket is almost too warm in the sunlight, but the wind sweeps the warmth away from my back with every breath.
It's Monday, just barely after noon, and I am only newly rearrived in Minnesota. My Sunday was spent back at home—I'd flown to Milwaukee to see my brother in a local performance of Scrooge, and while my sister had stayed behind at home, I have more tests to take this week, so I am in the Cities again. (And happy to be so—I do love it here.)
Drunk on the beauty of the day, I don't notice him until we've almost run into each other—my friend and on-again, off-again crush. "Sara!" he says, sweeping me into a hug. We say hello, exchange brief pleasantries—I can't stay long, and I am walking backwards away from him as we speak—perpetually late for class I may be, but I need to at least reach the final exam on time.
"I like your outfit," he calls after me as I inch away. "It matches your eyes." I laugh, delighted, and flee the scene.
I am glowing all the way to my final.
To the left (is that left? No, I guess it's not...) you can see my favorite photographs from this afternoon's walk back from German class. The sun was out, and there was a bit of snow in the air—not even flurry-levels of snow, buta few scattered flakes here and there, and a dusting of the stuff on the ground. I dug my camera out of my backpack and kept it ready in my pocket.
I try to be surreptitious about my camera, because the best thing to take pictures of is, simply, people. And people don't like being photographed. I like to think I'm sneaky,but that's really not the case. I pretend to be taking pictures of things around people, knowing that if I do things right, the people will be in the picture as well. Or I set up and pretend to be taking a picture of something across the way, knowing that someone will walk into the camera frame by the time the picture snaps.
People might not like being photographed, but that doesn't mean they'll go out of their way to avoid walking into someone's picture. Funny how that works. (Squirrels, on the other hand, seem pretty indifferent about having their pictures taken. Compared to some subjects I've photographed, the creature above was downright cooperative.)
I guess I don't know if Dad made oatmeal more than Mom when I was a kid, or if it just seems that way. But my memories are of bare feet on the chilly hardwood floor, scurrying to the table in winter, frost fogging the windowframe. Sitting up on the high-backed wooden chair, cold feet curled up under me, propping me up so I'm high enough to sit at the table. If Dad's made oatmeal, it means he's in a good mood, so perhaps there's even a blanket, still warm from sleep, for me to pull tight around myself at breakfast.
There's a pot of gloopy oatmeal on a hotpad, sitting on the table. Dad scoops some into my bowl, and pours cold milk over it. I raise myself up on my knees to reach the brown sugar container—we kept our brown sugar in a large old Country Crock tub when I was small, and it was a long time before I realised that the Country Crock tubs in the stores contained fake butter and not brown sugar—and heap large moist spoonfuls of it into my bowl, watching with anticipation as it melts and sinks below the surface of the milk.
Dad takes the raisins and, against my protests, spoons some into my bowl. They, too, sink into the mix. And I take my spoon, perhaps sneaking an extra spoonful of brown sugar, and mash the hot, gloppy oatmeal into the milk until everything is blended. And then, to eat.
This is breakfast—sweet, warm, delicious. With unexpected raisins here and there, and I'm not so much a fan, but everything else is wonderful, and I guess they're not that bad... even if it's a little strange to get cool, chewy lumps of dried fruit in among the bites of warm mush.
I love oatmeal to this day. Not because it's anything close to gourmet, not because it's easy or fast to make (instant oatmeal is another category entirely, and one of which I am not fond), but because it is warm. It's sweet. It's heaped with brown sugar on a cold morning, and drowned in milk, and it's wonderful and boring and bland—
and it reminds me of Dad,
and it reminds me of being a kid,
and it reminds me of home.
It's night. the sky hangs close to the earth, full of clouds that are impossible to see in the darkness. They muffle the lights of the city and hold back the moon and the stars. It's cold tonight—the kind of deep, icy night into which people wander, never to be heard from again. The kind of dark, cold night out of which stories are written and legends are made. The kind of winter night that kills people foolish enough to lose their way.
Not that anone ever intends to lose their way, of course, and not that everyone who has ever lost his way is foolish—many a wise person has been lost in the dark before. But it is foolish, perhaps, to underestimate the cold, to misjudge the distance, to wander into the darkness without a light, a path, a guide. Even the best-meaning person might be considered foolish who leaves his friend's house and freezes to death for lack of a jacket and a firm mind of home. The cold kills people every year.
Foolishness is not always punished at so high a cost.
Blisteringly cold, a friend of mine called it. When a deep breath freezes your lungs, and your throat hurts to breathe. When your cheeks and fingers still sting minutes after you've stepped inside to warm them with hot chocolate in front of a fire.
I love to walk in the dark and the cold. It clears my mind, I tell my friends—or I would, perhaps, if they asked. It wakes me up (but why do I want to be awake at ten, eleven, twelve at night?) It freezes my fingers and burns my lungs and stings my cheeks as I walk down the street in the darkness. It takes my pent-up rage and despair and turns that energy to a more positive purpose—suviving.
I walk in the cold when I am angry. The anger burns inside me, a hot fire in my chest, keeping me warm. It forces me to keep moving, pushing angrily forward against the wind, each icy gasp of oxygen feeding the flames. I want to scream, but the sound reezes in my throat and I keep walking, fighting for each stride.
It's frustrating, maddening, invigorating.
Cold.
I walk in the cold when I'm sad. The sinking feeling washes over me, and I step outside into the night. My stomach twists and my tears freeze, twin lines of saltwater down my cheeks. The cold bites at me, cutting further and deeper, under the waves of sadness freeze, until I don't feel them anymore. I'm not emotionally numb, just physically so.
I walk in the cold when I want to hurt something, and I'm reminded how dazzlingly fragile life is And how fierce nature can be, that an hour in the dark can beat rage and sorrow into submission, whisking away anger and despair with an icy winter wind, and leaving behind...
Nothing. Nothing but an empty feeling, and exhaustion, and relief to be alive, and inside, and out of the cold.
That first step outside on a bright, wintry morning—
When the cold freezes your lungs and snatches away your breath,
And your cheeks redden from the wind,
And your hair burns from the sunlight,
And the whole world is nothing but bright and cold—
Is there anything more perfect?
I submit to you that there is not.
