So the groundhog saw his shadow, or didn’t, which means, I think, either six more weeks of winter or that spring will be here in just six short weeks. It’s hard to remember.
Either way, there’s plenty of time left to complain about winter, and reasons for nearly every kind of complainer — it’s too cold, or too warm, there’s too much ice or not enough snow.
“There’s only been 20 inches of snow all season!” one of my colleagues griped last week.
“That’s 20 inches too much,” another griped right back.
As is usual this time of year, the weather’s been all over the place — a January thaw followed by an icy blast — but if you like winter more than you like griping, you can always make do.
Last week we skied in the woods behind our house, after the freeze that followed the thaw, on what was essentially an inch of snow on solid ice. My son wanted to check out his new hand-me-down cross country skis (which, he reports, are the best skis ever) and we managed not to fall down too many times.
The next day my daughter and I decided we’d be better off embracing the ice, and went skating on a perfectly round little frozen pond in a lovely park that no one ever seems to go to, then took a walk on the snowshoe paths that wind through the woods along a stream. The girl took advantage of the icy conditions, and her padded snowpants, by sliding down the hills.
When we got home and warmed up, I started hunting for the potting soil to plant onion seeds, the first garden task of the year. In the next few days we’ll finish up our spring seed order, sorting through all the catalogs that have been pouring in since before Christmas.
It’s that time of year, the solid middle of winter, when the idea of spring comes crashing in. No wonder the groundhog sends those mixed messages. We’re confused too. At the same time we’re finding ways to enjoy the cold — ice fishing, sledding, skating, skiing or just curling up with a book by the fire — we’re also marking the signs of spring. The sun is a little higher in the sky every day, and the days are a little longer. At night, the stars are shifting into new angles.
My Floridian husband, who officially hates winter, is perfectly happy to sit on ice for hours at a time, fishing in the cold. He manages by dreaming of gardens, deciding where to plant the beans and whether the garden on his parent’s land should host corn or potatoes this year, all while pulling perch out of a hole in the ice.
I like it when he brings home fish but could never sit still long enough to catch any myself. To each his own. When the boy and I return, happy, from skiing in the woods, the other half of our family shakes their heads. “I’m done with falling down,” my husband says, and while the daughter will skate, she’d rather observe winter through a window, from under a quilt or by a fire.
The boy will do it all — ice fish and snowshoe with his dad, ski and skate with me, or sled all by himself on intricate chutes that stretch from the back steps to the ox shed.
But even he’s looking toward spring, wondering if he’ll be able to ride his bike on the ski trails out back. And when the cherry tomatoes will be ripe.
Up here, the groundhogs are sound asleep, deep in burrows below the frost line. Groundhogs are true hibernators, reducing both their metabolic rate and their body temperature so much that they hardly seem alive. Their heartbeat drops from around 80 per minute to four or five, and their body temperature plunges from 100 degrees to around 40. Groundhog Day is a little early for an upstate New York hibernator to poke a nose out of the snow.
On the other hand, for Punxsutawney Phil, spring comes about six weeks earlier than it does up here: Phil’s last frost date is around April 20, while mine is May 31.
As for our own sleeping groundhogs, they probably won’t be coming out of their burrows until the first of March. But maybe, like the rest of us, they’re starting to dream about spring.
Margaret Hartley is the Gazette’s Sunday and features editor. Greenpoint appears in the Gazette’s print edition Sundays on the Environment page.
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