Today was one of those November days when winter doesn’t seem too close. The sky was clear and the air temperature was more like October, although the weary sun could not climb as far into the sky as it could even a few weeks ago. The sun and leaves fell in showers, as the wind swirled out of a late autumn sky—the blue not so intense as September or May, a hint of cloudiness even in a clear sky.
And then tonight: winter storm watch. Wha??
I am spoiled by the mild autumn, the sunshine we’ve had for the past few days. How can we suddenly have to start thinking of snow? Again? Already?
We had snow into May this year, and summer was fitful and fretful until the end: a string of 90s in late August and early September that left us gasping at the largely un-air-conditioned State Fair. (One of the local newscasts referred to it as the Great Minnesota Sweat Together, a play on the Fair’s usual tagline.) It seems far too soon to have to think about snow, much less enough that we may have to shovel.
I’m not ready. I haven’t started digging in closets and drawers for snow pants and boots and warm hats and gloves. The mower is still closer to the garage door than the snow thrower. The snow shovel is gathering dust behind the spade, and the garden has not yet been put to bed for winter. Salt? Windshield fluid? Not topped off yet. And I must drag out my trusty Yaktrax, wherever I may have hidden them that day in June when I came across them while looking for a sun hat.
Winter is a fact of life in Minnesota, although the winters are far milder now than they were when I was growing up. Any Minnesotan over the age of 30 who has lived here long enough believes in a warming climate. They might not accept that it has been caused by humans, but they believe it. Most would love to tell you how much more snow we had in the winter of 1983-84 or the great Halloween blizzard of 1991. (Sadly, I was living in Arizona then, so my only stories of the Halloween Blizzard are of talking to my parents on the phone.) I am happy to tell my children that I had to walk uphill—both ways—to school through drifts of snow over my knees. (This is true: I had to walk over a hill, so portions of the trek were uphill both going to school and coming home. And the people who lived along this street did not always shovel their sidewalks.) My kids roll their eyes, but they don’t know what it was like to have to walk more than half a mile to school (up and over a hill) through high snowdrifts with a windchill of forty below zero. There were some days like that at the University of Minnesota, too. I’ll never forget walking across campus to an 8:00 class, passing other people just as bundled up in hats and scarves as I was. We must have looked like walking piles of winter gear. Those were the days before Thinsulate and fleece.
I know winter is real and (with apologies to George R. R. Martin) winter is coming. I know that. I should be prepared. The forecast of snow in November shouldn’t feel like slap in the face. But it does. After beautiful autumn days, it does.
As I was returning from my run yesterday (without the dog), I was struck by the sight of a red maple illuminated by the early morning sun. It glowed as the sunrise burned through and over the rustling leaves. It was a moment of almost heart-stopping beauty. Again, I feel the inability of words to convey the beauty of turning leaves, of autumn in Minnesota.
Today the strong winds pulled many of the leaves from the trees, and this evening many more branches stand bare, many more leaves lay in piles and drifts along the ground. The leaf piles are forerunners of the drifts of snow we’ll soon see, as winter returns with its own stark, less flamboyant beauty. So red, russet, orange will give way to white and gray, to weathered fence posts and the old gold of grasses amidst the snow. The blue will bleach out of the sky until some late January day when the sun grows strong enough to begin to climb back up to the northland. The lakes and trees will sleep until March and April wake them once more to the rushing, reckless green that races over the world come spring.
Winter is coming, and I have to say farewell to autumn.