Our Environment: “The Winter Sun” by Scott Turner
Sunday, February 23, 2020
If you’ve never visited the Ohio Valley, don’t fret. For the last couple of months, you’ve lived in it.
I spent nine winters in Columbus, Ohio. Very nearly all were gray seasons, just like much of the winter of 2019-2020. For many reasons, Columbus is a great town, but its characterless winter days, sometimes stretching for weeks, felt oppressive.
This winter, Karen and I have missed the sun. Yes, it’s been a fairly warm winter, and relatively snow-free. A lot of rain, though. We’ll take the snow and cold, especially when brilliant sunshine follows the snow.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTDo you remember snow? Recall the beauty and wonder of falling flakes, and how sunny skies often succeed a snowfall? Remember how snow instantly updates the landscape, like an old room receiving a fresh coat of paint?
We miss the new shapes that snow creates out of trees, shrubs, and stonewalls. Snow quiets the landscape and smooths the streets. It billows and curls into drifts that bring out the kids in us. And the sun, often warm by late February, makes light of this frosted landscape. I miss icicles melting in sunshine, beaming down from sapphire skies.
This winter, I’ve also missed the chance to track the creatures that traverse the snow. I did get one opportunity, though. This was after the snowfall that left a couple of inches on the ground in mid-January. Treading alongside the Mossashuck River in Providence, I identified prints of skunk, opossum, rabbit, squirrel, cat, rat, and mice or vole, as well as delicate tracks of foraging songbirds, likely Dark-eyed Juncos. Alas, the prints didn’t last long. The snow froze and then melted, distorting and widening the tracks until they and the mantle that once preserved them were gone.
Now, signs of spring encroach upon this strange and melancholy season. If you’ve been in the garden this past week, you may have noticed that snowdrops are in bloom. Meanwhile, on the edge of wetlands and moist woods, the first silvery pussy willows are emerging. These are, in fact, flowering spikes, called “catkins”
A pussy willow tree is either a male or a female. The velvety white catkins belong to male plants. These will produce pollen, which the fuzzy, greenish, elongated catkins on female trees may receive courtesy of the wind. Pussy willows remain exposed to wind pollination for weeks before the leaf buds open and wind-blocking foliage appears.
By the way, pussy willows are named after cats, maybe because of the soft, fur-like flowering spikes. Catkins are also cat-derived, named for the tails of kittens.
We’ve had a run of sunny days recently, and I am enjoying the brilliance of sunshine, which is bringing a glow to the blooms of snowdrops and pussy willows. And as February draws to a close, it’s the next best thing to enjoying snow, which either isn’t coming, or has yet to fall.
Scott Turner is a Providence-based writer and communications professional. For more than a decade he wrote for the Providence Journal and we welcome him to GoLocalProv.com.
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