Tag Archives: winter

Riding the Polar Coaster Spring with Apricity

~
Wintertide @ Middlebridge on the Narrow River. photo jal

Regardless of one’s residential latitude in continental USA, February’s weather has been snaggle toothed. It bites.  Atmospheric rivers have pummeled the California coast with heavy rain, thunderstorms, and flooding. Southern coastal New England celebrated a couple of hefty snowstorms, and snowbirds in the south are complaining that their Crocs are cold and wet. Since hibernation is not an option during wintertide, I savor the simple pleasure of apricity, the warmth of the sun in winter.

Lowest tide of February @ Nausauket Point. Photo courtesy of Scott Berstein

I pray for apricity on drawn-out, dank days when the sun is cloistered behind a wimple of cloud cover. The only way I’ve been able to adapt to the New England thermocline is to adopt practical fashion habits favored by women currently signing up for their half-century high school reunions and 20th century nuns. Our couture favors cloaking our bodies with layers of cotton, wool, and fleece rather than thin, high-tech fabrics that wick sweat. Women in the habit of winter-layering know that the only time they will sweat is around 3 o’clock in the morning even though the thermostat is set at a degree far beneath the year they graduated.

This year’s Farmers’ Almanac predicts we are journeying into a Polar Coastal Spring with many days of chilly temperatures and nasty weather. The Equinox appears to be unstable and thus incapable of breaking winter’s clench. The agrarians of Nostradamus prophesize a cold and stormy season where weather patterns will range from cool, wet, and thundery in the northeast to balmy and stormy in the south. Regional predictions eerily reflect political trends. Michigan, Wisconsin, and Indiana will be cool and unsettled, while Texas and its neighbors are predictably warm and thundery. California, not surprisingly, anticipates scattered showers while the northwest can look forward to grungy days of cool, cloudy, and showery weather befitting endless cups of overpriced coffee.

Ride the Spring Polar Coaster ahead of the wind facing the sun. Shed winter habits as you approach the growing heat of Solstice. Enjoy the trip by savoring apricity. Be mindful of the forecast by being a pragmatic optimist and apply a dollop of sunscreen daily.

Savor moments of apricity where ever the Spring Polar Coaster takes you. Photo courtesy of Scott Berstein

“Hanging Like an Icicle on a Dutchman’s Beard”

Featured ~
No snowflakes are identical. Neither are our memories of winters past and winters present.

Snowstorms are among the many perks of childhood that are meant to be savored in the raw. Today’s weather is “plowable snow”. Heavy snowfalls have become somewhat rare in coastal Rhode Island. Most wintery-weather predictions fall flat and it just rains. But not today. It’s snowing. Our neighbor Charlie, a zesty kindergartener, is zipping around the snow-covered neighborhood summoning his cousins to battle by pummeling fistfuls of flakes at their windows. He looks like a young Norwegian; blond, handsome, and barely dressed despite the blasting north winds and frozen pellets affixed to his hair.

My granddaughter Charley is about the same age as Charlie. She lived in Norway, where youngsters become acclimated to perpetually dank weather, for three of her first five winters. Norwegian preschoolers nap outdoors on portable cots regardless of the season or the weather. Charley’s parents learned to swaddle her in woolen onesies and select outer wear that transforms kids into gnomes. Norwegians aren’t bothered by the cold and proceed through the seasons at a stable pace unlike New Englanders, many of whom consider winter to be a period of hibernation. I am nestled like a Mama bear before a pellet stove layered up with a long sleeve tee and hoodie watching Charlie outside sans hat and gloves gleefully cramming snow down his brother’s back.

Around midpoint of the twentieth century, my grandfather from western New York lamented that winters had grown soft and short since he was a boy. I shared this observation with an undergraduate geography professor who scoffed that the old man was daft. Squaring his shoulders, tipping his beard upwards and speaking with his thickest Aussie accent, Professor solemnly swore before a class of nearly napping freshmen that, “climate has not ever nor will ever change during a human being’s lifetime.”  The hapless wisdom perpetuated by academics during the Age of Aquarius has, as Shakespeare quipped, “sailed north…like an icicle on a Dutchman’s beard.”[1]

     Wickipedia, Public Domain

Polar explorations have been popular since Eric the Red “discovered” Greenland over a thousand years ago. Shakespeare was referring to a sixteenth century polar explorer Willem Barentsz who was a precursor to Jeff Bezos. Barentsz’s mission was to find a shortcut between Europe and China that would make global shopping faster and more profitable. His rationale for enduring endless dark, frigid months aboard a leaking ship that was attacked by polar bears is as lame as signing up for Musk’s Martian expedition. Sub-zero temps have an ethereal grip on humankind’s imagination.

Unlike snowstorms remembered from the past century, recent winters seem to be little more than shortcuts from autumn to spring. Today’s Charlies are tuned into a world that gets cold for a little while and stays warm for a long time. Their generation will swim in oceans cooled by glaciers calved off the coast of Greenland. Hopefully, by the twelfth night of their lifetimes, “by some laudable attempt at either valor or policy” (Act 3 Scene 2) they will redeem the joys of long, snowy coastal winters. Their grandkids will savor winter naps asunder thick gray skies and frolic during snowstorms that freeze their hatless heads with icicles like those on a Dutchman’s beard.

My daughter Amberley and son Barrett savoring the perks of winter in a Norwegian fjord.

[1] Twelfth Night (3.2, 24-27)