Impending Winter

Living in the mountains is a joy. Dramatic, infinite all under arching, technicolor skies. However it requires some common sense and humor that seems unnecessary in the flatlands or the coast. Mountains compound everything, the cold is harsher, the wind fiercer, the rain more penetrating and the snow deeper. Not to suggest we face these facts the way the earlier settlers did, stumbling home to a frozen cabin with a pelt or two, a sack of coal chips or sodden firewood. We return from the rigors of the ski slopes to an oppressively warm, suburban house to the quiet thrum of music and the almost instant hum of the kettle. The snow floats down past a clean window and the wind swarms around the house to little effect.
So why the common sense? Why the humor? Well we are affected. We shovel snow, even off our threatened roofs, we drive over shimmering, slippery roads, we dodge the cars of Arizonans and Texans and discover frozen pipes have inundated the children's room.

Everything is further away, our world gets smaller, even the mountains, but for the illuminated slopes, move away. This is the time for humor, few of us were born here, we moved here( post the frozen cabin, since the suburban womb), no one to blame but us. We need to laugh about the mountains of snow, photograph our cars under piles of it, refuse to be trapped in our safe places, permit our children to risk frostbite to allow them to play in a temporal wonderland of white. Skiing is idiotic but fun, everything is laid on for you, it is clean and safe, conversations about it, are banal and safe, even talentless people can be decent at it, rather like Pickleball.

I know the sting of winter is felt in other places, the wind swept aching plains, cities with their skyscraper canyons and harsh streets, but our winter has grandeur, not just discomfort, not just risk. There is adventure implicit in our winters, defiance, courage, not just patience and dismay. Joy has to outweigh concern, being holed up in our suburban castle should seem like surrender.

Winter is coming, as it always has (said with less conviction after our 10th hotter summer) but here at the Vineyard it remains warm and beautiful. Right through November visitors will enjoy the garden and the warming chimeneas, perhaps a colorful blanket over their shoulders; hot mulled wine and soup rather than a crisp little Riesling (still available).