My daybooks for the third week of January record snow and cold but also thaws and warmth.
Details of history show many variations in January days, show this time to be as porous with change as it is dense with darkness and Arctic power.
Year after year, openings in the wall of winter accumulate to soften the texture and body of the month. Those openings allow in light and color and sound and movement that contrast with the otherwise harsh weeks that lie so close to solstice.
Unlike the imposing storms of January, the events that redefine the passage of Capricorn to Aquarius are plain and small: the occasional appearance of flies and lady beetles indoors; sightings of skunks at night and overwintering robins and bluebirds in the day; the rare appearance of a butterfly; the songs of the titmouse, the frequent arrival of starlings and grackles at bird feeders; the increasing frequency of mourning dove and cardinal mating calls; the first blossoming of aconites and snowdrops and snow crocuses…..
All of these events do not always happen in the same place in the same year, but together their radii pierce the rings of temporal space and linear time to offer precedent and promise that augment our understanding of the season.
Perhaps best of all, their collective story reveals a simple and happy truth, that these dimensions are not hidden, that they and so many others can appear and transform the meaning of our world in the blinking of an eye.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the first week of Late Winter. In the meantime, watch for the little things. See how they grow into spring....
