“All the sweetness of nature was buried in black winter’s grave, and the wind sings a sad lament with its cold, plaintive cry. But oh, the teeming summer will come, bringing life in its arms, and will strew rosy flowers on the face of hill and dale.”
- Thomas Telynog Evans (1840-1865)
The words of the Victorian Era Welsh poet rang in my ears as we descended into winter again this week. I confess it is more difficult for me to be as optimistic as he is when it comes to maintaining a perspective on the impending return of summer while trapped in the doldrums of winter.
It is true that the days grow longer, and the season will change toward something brighter and warmer in the month ahead. I imagine myself out flyfishing in a stream flowing down a mountainside.
But dang, it is cold and gloomy and icy after our nice reprieve these past 10 days or so.
Of course, complaining about the weather is as old as the hills. Humans have always done so since we developed language and walked under the sky. Having said that, Alberta has given me several grounds for complaint on the weather front in the past year. Too warm and dry days in the summer; and also apparently in the summer to come if the experts are to be believed. When not roasting under the sun, I have seen the hood of my car dented by incoming hail stones, and I have been half-drowned by torrential deluges.
Here we are in winter, where the milder days are bookended by -40 C frosters, blowing snows or fogged and icy roads.
I think upon the spring to come as I look out my window at the white and frigid landscape-- a few flurries, but underneath still dry as a bone.
Will spring be kind? Will I be able to say: “Welcome, with your lovely greenwood choir, summery month of May for which I long,” like the poet Dafydd ap Gwilym once declared long ago?
I truly hope so.
But given how things have been going this past year, I am more likely to lament as Iolo Morgannwg once did: “Gloomy am I, oppressed and sad; love is not for me while the winter lasts.”
