Late winter

Wintergreen.

Of late I've been taking weekend walks in a nearby nature preserve. The most surprising thing about these walks may be the utter stillness of the woods. When one first sets out the traffic noise from a nearby interstate highway is inescapable, but once over the first ridge there is hardly a sound: no squirrels, few birds (and only a handful of other hikers). Though the ground is covered with acorns in extraordinary profusion there is far less evident wildlife here than along the margins of town.

In addition to the oaks, the most evident trees are beeches, black birches, a few hickories, and tulip-trees.

Almost none of this land is old-growth forest. Except in the steepest or marshiest sections there are stone walls in sight almost everywhere, and in one spot, a spillway (which may be more recent; I'm not sure). Farming has moved elsewhere, to less stony ground.

Arrival

“The illusory emptiness ...” – K

The long, low ferry, illuminated only by a single lantern that rattled on its bow, slowly drew into shore, bumped heavily against the great timber pilings, and came to rest. From the deck a dark figure tossed a heavy rope across to a pair of waiting hands on the pier, and in a few deft motions the craft had been tied off and secured and was rocking gently in its own diminishing wake. The passengers began to disembark, in twos and threes. Among them was a tall man in a heavy overcoat and turned-up collar, who waited his turn, then climbed the rungs of the short ladder to stand on the surface of the pier. He joined the flow heading inland, off the wet planks and onto solid ground, then up a gradual incline into the shadowy beginnings of the water district. Lanterns shone from the salt-encrusted windows of a few low buildings, and figures beckoned from the doorways, but he ignored them and kept pace with the others. They ascended along a narrow street of shuttered and dilapidated warehouses, all of them dark and to all appearances abandoned. Here and there an alley broke off to the left or right, and small furtive creatures scuttled away at the sound of approaching footsteps.

The intermittent drizzle that had accompanied the ferry in its passage across the water was now turning to snow, though the heavy, wet flakes melted as soon as they met the pavement, or dissolved on the coats and faces of the advancing pedestrians. The street opened out into a little square of three-storey stone buildings. In a few, lights appeared in the windows and bits of muffled conversation broke from behind tavern doors, but the throng strode firmly onward, losing only a straggler now and then who turned aside from the flow and stood in place for a moment on the streetcorner, as if debating inwardly, before stepping away towards the flickering halos that emanated through the windowglass of storefronts.

A few blocks further and the narrow street intersected a great, bright boulevard, along which a thin but steady procession of citizens were promenading, wrapped in scarves and muffs and with hats angled down against the snow, which was falling steadily now and swirling into little eddies at their feet. The two perpendicular streams of traffic began to mingle and break apart until they were no longer distinguishable, but still the man kept to his course, passing streetcorner after busy streetcorner, always climbing, his back to the waterline. Eventually he came to a grand square, ringed by statues of heroes and columns of uniform but leafless trees whose branches arched over the crowd. A trio of acrobats were performing on the sidewalk, detaining at least for a moment the attention of a cluster of spellbound onlookers, and near them a man in a tattered leather coat was leafing through the pages of a windblown and half-soaked newspaper. From a bandshell beyond came a steady rhythm of brass and drumbeats that formed a kind of ostinato to the shouts and laughter that echoed around the square; the man slowed his step and cocked an ear to hear the music better, but only for a moment. Leaving the square behind, he continued through a prosperous mercantile district, passing elegant couples, in high spirits and wrapped in furs and astrakhans against the cold, who emerged from limousines parked along the curb and disappeared into the interiors of the nearest night spot at hand. The women eyed him warily but without altering their expressions; the men showed no sign of noticing him at all.

A few blocks beyond he reached the summit of the city. All around him stood immense, gray, unornamented towers, blindingly and coldly illuminated but empty and silent at that hour. The snow was collecting at their bases, an inch deep or more, and beginning to drift against the curbs and retaining walls. He turned for a moment to take a look behind him, down at the prospect of the city and the waterside that lay in the distance below, but they were mostly lost to view, hidden by the snow and the unforgiving columns. Block after block he walked, until the tallest towers began to give way to smaller but equally featureless structures, then all at once he was beyond the center of the city altogether and was descending towards an isolated, windswept knoll, a busy park during the day but utterly dark and abandoned after sundown. He strode along a concrete path, past cast iron benches that overlooked a steep declivity; before him, dotted here and there with tiny lights, lay the mist-shrouded hinterland of the city. He crossed a low, iron bridge to another small hill, then came to the uppermost of a long procession of steps that led down to the valley floor. He passed no one; his footing had become treacherous as the snow slowly mounted, and a bitter wind now rose up, driving the swirling flakes into his eyes. After a few moments, in the shelter of the hill above him, the wind dropped and he continued his descent in the absolute stillness of the falling snow.

At the base of the hill, as far as he could see in all directions, lay a warren of narrow streets lined with low houses and hovels packed tightly one against the other. Most were dark, but here and there a weak, solitary flame appeared through a window. There was no sound except, intermittently, the very distant barking of a dog. A solitary pedestrian, head bowed, emerged from a crossing alleyway and nodded at his approach; he nodded in return but spoke no greeting. The forlorn banlieu sprawled on; his exertions gave him warmth as he walked first one mile, than another. The snow was deep now, unbroken by footprints, and the wind once again picked up and stung his face, blowing drifts across his path as he trudged heavily from one grim corner to the next. There was no longer any illumination in the buildings he passed; either they were untenanted or their occupants had quenched their lamps and sought sleep, huddled in the chill, alone or with their companions as luck might have it. He heard the cracking of a branch from far off, and only then did he notice the cragged outline of the first tree, looming above a house as he passed. Soon the houses thinned out and the woods enveloped him, the street narrowed to a winding but well-trod path. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that the city had disappeared behind him; the snow had risen to his knees but all at once it ceased falling and the wind dropped altogether. He felt the blood return to his face as he approached the little cottage, its windows lit up by a strong warm glow, where his love lay drowsing, awaiting him, wrapped in her blanket of dreams.

Snow

Some seasonally appropriate images by the printmaker Kawase Hasui (1883 – 1957), via the extensive online galleries of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The Survivors

The men picked their way gingerly down the side of the ridge, traversing through the snow in broad snowshoes made of hard white ash, steadying themselves when they could against the trunks of the pines. Though the trail that lay beneath was deeply covered and only a few jagged rocks poked through the surface of the snow to interfere with their descent, the men knew that if they trod where it was too steep the slope could easily give way and bury them. It was only their second day out but already it seemed much longer.

A pale and gauzy sun lingered just above the horizon, casting the last feeble illumination of a dismal but snowless afternoon. There would be no moon that evening and so before long, as soon as they made it to level ground, they would have to camp for the night

Before the onset of winter they had smoked and dried as much game and fish as they could, not as much as in the best years perhaps but more than in the worst. Then the storms came, early and constant, the deer starved or headed for lower ground, and the snow was too deep to follow them. Inexorably their stocks had dwindled, until it was clear that there wouldn't be enough to keep them all alive until spring. They left what remained for the women and children and those too ill or old to make the trip; there might be enough to do for them at least. If the men reached the lowlands they would barter for food with the skins they carried in bundles on their backs, and return when the thaws came.

Seven had started out, but only four remained. Up in their hollow, in the shelter of their cabins and their fires, they had been safe, but once on the trail it was a different story. Though the travelers carried nothing but staves and short knives they knew that their pursuers wouldn't challenge them directly. Instead, they kept their distance, shadowing them from behind the trees, until one of the men struggled in the snow and began to fall behind. Then they would seize their moment and circle in, swiftly and quietly. When the first scream came the other men knew better than to turn around. There was nothing they could do and it would all be over quickly anyway. The ravens would take care of the scraps. After that they would be safe for a while, a few hours perhaps, but they knew that they would be accompanied on their journey until the hunger of their hunters was extinguished. They would have to travel for three more days, maybe four; if they were lucky two or three of the men might make it through.

When they completed their descent they turned and walked along the base of the ridge into a little wood of laurel and pine. Before the last twilight flickered out they settled under a ledge, cleared away as much snow as they could, then removed their gloves and set a small fire, just enough to dry their hands and bring back some feeling to their frostbitten fingers. They melted snow in a small wooden bowl and slaked their thirst, each in his turn. As the fire died away the men huddled together and fell into fitful and frigid sleep; beyond, somewhere in the darkness, the others bided their time.

December

As the year waned she spent most of her weekend morning hours in bed, asleep if she could stay asleep or just thinking with her eyes closed if she couldn't. She always kept the room a little cold around her; she liked it that way, didn't like having to throw off a layer of the covers in which she lay enveloped if she got too hot. In her third floor flat, with the storm windows shut tight against the occasional passing car and the shouts of the downstairs neighbor's children, she would be undisturbed as long as she liked; her friends knew not to call. By mid-morning light would fill the room but she didn't mind; it fell obliquely, filtered by the shades, and by the time she was finally ready to rise it would have taken the edge off the morning chill.

She would cast a glance at the cover of the paper, dropped on her doorstep before dawn, but then set it aside until evening, make herself some oatmeal or a couple of eggs and a cup of tea, and only then change out of her nightgown and robe into a pair of jeans, a layer or two of sweatshirts, an old and ample soft gray sweater, and take her winter coat down from the wooden hanger in the little hall closet where it hung alone. She would collect her sketchbook and a few pencils from the easel she kept by her rarely used fireplace, gather her gloves and hat, and go out. It was too cold along the harbor, this time of year, so she would head inland instead, climbing to the outskirts of town, to the first ploughed-over cornfield, then walk another mile or so along the road until she came to the edge of the woods. There she would sweep the tail of her coat beneath her and sit on a stone wall crusted with patches of lichen, yellow and blue and grey-green, and with her back to the road she would sketch the oak trees, the frayed remains of an orchard that had been abandoned years before, and the crows that gathered to glean the fields.

She couldn't pick out the individual crows by sight, but she was pretty sure they were the same ones, from week to week; in any case, there always seemed to be the same number, a dozen or so across the acre's ground she had a view of. By now they must have been accustomed to the sight of her, but if so they acted no differently, never approached or gave a sign of recognition. She imagined they had their own concerns that she was not part of, or perhaps they noticed her but were too polite to intrude upon her solitude. But now and then it would seem to her that one, having drawn near, would considerately pose for her for a few moments, just long enough for her to deftly trace its form with her pencil. If so, she didn't signal her appreciation but registered in inwardly; it was her treaty with the crows, that she would never cross the line that separated them.

When the outlines of the furthermost trees began to soften and the wind picked up and bit at her cheeks she would close her book and climb down from the wall, ready for a warm meal, the newspaper, and phone calls. At night she would dream of the crows and in her dream she would hear their histories and they would tell her everything that had happened and everything they had seen from the deepest beginning of time.

(Slightly reworked; originally from December 2008)

Sloth

Sometime in the 19th century (an Emperor is on the throne of France), a Parisian woman named Anne relocates to a tiny village in the countryside. Though she misses some of the creature comforts of the metropolis, she has as compensation "the unsullied joys of country life" in "this heaven on earth." She writes a series of letters to her old friend Solange (who apparently never answers them). In her second letter she alludes in passing to a curious provincial custom: during the winter months the locals quite literally hibernate, tucking themselves into goatskin bags and suspending themselves from the rafters until spring. "How strange these people are, who do not hesitate to subtract the entire winter from their span of life!" she declares. As the correspondence continues, Anne becomes increasingly alarmed, and at last horrified, when she realizes that not only the peasants, but the servants and even the local gentry will all take part in the practice, leaving her entirely to her own devices. As a last departing hussar waits impatiently to ride off, she pens one final desperate missive to her erstwhile friend:

There are only two minutes left. Understand me well, Solange. I cannot prepare my food, I cannot do anything, there is nothing in the house, I am frightened of the horses, I could not ride them to safety -- even if they too are not asleep. I shall die here if you do not save me, Solange .... Solange, my soul, what can I say to you? Save your wretched

A

Years ago, when I first read the story summarized above, Tomasso Landolfi's brief "Pastoral" (which can be found in the New Directions collection Gogol's Wife and Other Stories) I took it for a bit of Gothic whimsy, a fantastic tale of quasi-vampirism in the provinces. But according to a New York Times op ed piece by the biographer and cultural historian Graham Robb, in the days before electrification many French countryfolk did in fact engage in something approaching hibernation, though not, to be sure, by hanging from the rafters.

Economists and bureaucrats who ventured out into the countryside after the Revolution were horrified to find that the work force disappeared between fall and spring. The fields were deserted from Flanders to Provence. Villages and even small towns were silent, with barely a column of smoke to reveal a human presence. As soon as the weather turned cold, people all over France shut themselves away and practiced the forgotten art of doing nothing at all for months on end.

In the mountains, the tradition of seasonal sloth was ancient and pervasive. "Seven months of winter, five months of hell," they said in the Alps. When the "hell" of unremitting toil was over, the human beings settled in with their cows and pigs. They lowered their metabolic rate to prevent hunger from exhausting supplies. If someone died during the seven months of winter, the corpse was stored on the roof under a blanket of snow until spring thawed the ground, allowing a grave to be dug and a priest to reach the village.

Robb provides more details in his book The Discovery of France:

An official report on the Nièvre in 1944 described the strange mutation of the Burgundian day-labourer once the harvest was in and the vine stocks had been burned:

After making the necessary repairs to their tools, these vigorous men will now spend their days in bed, packing their bodies tightly together in order to stay warm and to eat less food. They weaken themselves deliberately.

Human hibernation was a physical and economic necessity. Lowering the metabolic rate prevented hunger from exhausting supplies. In Normandy, according to the diary of Jules Renard, "the peasant at home moves little more than the sloth" (1889); "in winter, they pass their lives asleep, corked up like snails" (1908).

Some of these reports should, no doubt, be taken with a grain of salt, nor are they unique to France. (Some reasonable skepticism on the whole topic of "human hibernation" can be found on the blog Not of General Interest.) But even the fact that such reports were believed at the time lends a whole new slant to Landolfi's story. His hapless heroine is now revealed as an obtuse and pampered outsider, who is not only utterly spoiled and unable to fend for herself without the assistance of servants, but who also in her sophistication is unable to see the simple practical value of a good long spell of winter dormancy.

In any case, just something to mull over on the shortest day of the year. By the way, according to New Directions, the photograph on the front of the dust jacket, in which the author's face is almost completely obscured, was the only one Landolfi approved for publication, at least as of 1963 when Gogol's Wife was released. The jacket was designed by David Ford.

By the shore

It's warmer tonight and a fog lies across the lake. The ice is still sound -- it won't thaw yet for weeks -- but as soon as evening falls, even on a moonlit night, nobody ventures out on it. It's not that we're afraid of them, exactly -- they must be far more afraid of us, I suppose, though who knows what they think? -- but all the same we keep our wary distance as they keep theirs. In the morning, perhaps, as we hack through and clean out the holes in the ice and set our lines, we'll come across their traces, their scratchings and their footprints, the bloody scraps of a desperate meal they wrested from the black water below.

Many of us have never seen them, or aren't sure. Sometimes, staring out at the lake, the fog swirls apart and for an instant something seems to dart across, far from shore, or stands, just for a moment, and stares back. They never come ashore, never pick around the edges of the camp in search of old bones or flakes of desiccated fish, not that there'd be much to find. Where they go after sunrise or once the ice breaks up for good and spring comes we don't know and don't ask. To the far shore, we suppose, or deep into the woods beyond, where we ourselves don't venture.

The worst is when they fight among themselves. It doesn't happen very often; only now and then, in the bitterest part of the winter, when we ourselves are nearly starving, without notice their hideous screaming cuts through the night and we cover our ears -- though who could block out that sound or forget it once it is heard? Then after a while it's suddenly quiet, and we know perfectly well what that quiet means. No one has ever found a body, the next morning, on the ice.

Winter pieces (IV)

It had snowed the morning before, six inches of soft powder, then after an afternoon of brilliant sun the temperature had dropped overnight enough to freeze the surface once again, leaving an inch-thick plate of harder snow to lie upon the rest. He had parked his car on the shoulder of the two-lane road, and as he stepped away from the pavement and climbed over the weathered stone wall the top layer broke into shards beneath his feet with a noise like shattering china.

Even so he surprised the fox. It stood in a little clearing where the orchard met the woods, no more than twenty feet away, one paw raised, its eyes fixed upon him as he himself came to rest. They eyed each other neutrally, then, after a moment, the fox sat, its gaze still on him. Their bearings were set to intersect when they resumed, if neither turned, but each seemed unwilling either to step forward or to change their course. The stillness of the morning surrounded them, without a hint of wind.

Finally the fox stood and slipped off, veering just a bit to skirt the outer row of the barren pear trees, moving quickly, not in fear but as if it needed to make up for lost time.

Winter pieces (III)

As the year waned and the days grew shorter she spent most of her weekend morning hours in bed, asleep if she could stay asleep or just thinking with her eyes closed if she couldn't. She always kept the room a little cold around her; she liked it that way, didn't like having to throw off a layer of the covers that she kept tightly wound around her if she got too hot. In her third floor flat, with the storm windows shut tight against the occasional passing car and the shouts of the downstairs neighbor's children, she would be undisturbed as long as she liked; her friends knew not to call. By mid-morning light would fill the room but she didn't mind; it fell obliquely, filtered by the shades, and by the time she was finally ready to rise it would have taken the edge off the morning chill.

She would cast a glance at the cover of the paper, dropped on her doorstep before dawn, but then set it aside until evening, make herself some oatmeal or a couple of eggs and a cup of tea, and only then would she change out of her nightgown and robe into a pair of jeans, a layer or two of sweatshirts, an old and ample soft gray sweater, and take her winter coat down from the wooden hanger in the little hall closet where it hung alone. She would collect her sketchbook and a few pencils from the easel she kept by her rarely used fireplace, gather her gloves and hat, and go out. It would be too cold along the harbor, this time of year, so she would head inland instead, climbing to the outskirts of town, to the first ploughed-over cornfield, then walk another mile or so along the road until she came to the edge of the woods. There she would sweep the tail of her coat beneath her and sit on a stone wall crusted with patches of lichen, yellow and blue and grey-green, and with her back to the road she would sketch the oak trees, the frayed remains of an orchard that had been abandoned years before, and the crows that gathered to glean the fields.

She couldn't pick the crows out by sight, but she was pretty sure they were the same ones, from week to week; in any case, there always seemed to be the same number, a dozen or so in the acre's ground she had a view of. They must have been accustomed to the sight of her, but if so they acted no differently, never approached or gave a sign of recognition. She imagined they had their own concerns, and she was not part of them, or perhaps they noticed her but were too polite to intrude upon her solitude. But now and then it would seem to her that one, having drawn near, would considerately pose for her for a moment, just long enough for her to deftly trace its form with her pencil. If so, she didn't signal her appreciation but kept it to herself; it was her treaty with them, that she would never cross that line.

She would have only a few hours of daylight. When the outlines of the furthermost trees began to soften and the wind picked up and bit at her cheeks she would close her book and climb down from the wall, ready for a warm meal, the newspaper, and phone calls. At night she would dream of the crows and in her dream she would hear their histories and they would tell her everything that had happened and everything they had seen from the deepest beginning of time.

Bread

She stood by the sink looking out through the window. It was dusk and a line of crows were passing above the bare trees, all flying in the same direction, heading for their winter roosts in the valley a few miles to the west. They knew where they were going but showed no sign of haste.

The backyard brambles were bare and stiff. The fruit trees had gotten out of control again; she would have to tend to them but not now, later when the worst of winter was over.

Her children were grown, gone. She poured flour into a bowl, scattered in a little sugar, salt, and yeast, then mixed it with a wooden spoon. She took a glass measuring cup and filled it at the tap, then poured the water in, scouring and beating the mixture together with a few efficient strokes. She added more flour, until she could no longer turn it with the spoon. Rolling her sleeves up, she gathered the uneven mass in her hands and worked it until it came together. She spread another bit of flour on a wooden board and began to fold the dough, slowly, strongly, with a practiced touch, adding a little more flour when it began to stick.

She thought about the motions she was making, how they had been performed, with little alteration, for thousands of years, from the time when some woman unknown, somewhere in the Levant or North Africa, had taken flour she had likely querned by hand, coarser and darker flour than this to be sure, and worked it together with a bit of saved and soured dough, then set it aside to let it ferment and rise.

Her own yeast came out of a jar, the flour came from god only knew where, all the ingredients had passed through a complicated nexus of exchange, had been processed, reduced to their most elemental and negotiable state, packaged, transported, sold and re-sold. But as she finished kneading and set a damp cloth over the dough it was no longer a commodity, it had reverted to its ancient identity, beyond all that. It would rise for a while and then she would bake it and eat it on her own, with a little leftover soup she had made two days before.

And she would keep on doing so, for a long time to come.