Winter’s Solitude

Solitude reigns in late winter in Humptulips County.  When Helen and I walk, we hear the lesser sounds more easily since they aren’t overwhelmed by the raucousness of spring and summer.  Where we are on our morning walk, for example, can easily be determined by the sound of our footsteps, clearly heard in the muting, moist air: soft slaps place us on the asphalt of shared lanes, somewhere in its midst; more complex cracklings place us on our gravelled driveway, either coming or going depending upon the relative vigor of our stride.

We often hear birds on our walks, but the density of winter’s bird calls isn’t that of spring or summer.  The intervals between individual calls are frequently significant, causing me to hold my breath to see if a responsive call will come before the same bird emits a second or third forlorn inquiry.  I often gauge the intensity of my anticipation by the time it takes for me to note the absence of its usually audible rasp.

And so it is that the less noticeable become the noticed. The “wauk, wauk-wauk” of the Common Nighthawk, for example, is suddenly audible as a distinctly solo piece rather than as the sound of a minor instrument struggling to be heard in a strident symphony.  For late winter is a time for less to become more.

This is not to say that late winter’s countryside is still and noiseless. This is only to say that winter is a time for us to notice the subtle sounds related to our passage through the morning: the plink of something unknown slithering into the depths of our marsh as we come to its attention; the wind’s unrestrained passage through pines and the heavy grass of the abandoned acreage to our south; the thrashing of startled smaller life, whether bird or mammal, through the underbrush or the dense stands of bare blackberry canes; the occasional, plaintive neighing of one of our neighbor’s horses longing to be free of its barn; the warnings of protective dogs, whether as loud barking from behind adjacent fences or as  howling from afar brought to our attention by an errant wind.  It is as if our morning walks are conducted on sparse, somewhat abstract landscapes of intermittent, unrelated, muted sounds that somehow, through the magic of aggregation, yield a coherent canvas.

About Gavin Stevens

Humptulips County is the wholly fictional on-line residence of Stephen Ellis, a would-be writer, an avid fan of William Faulkner and his Yoknapatawpha County, and a retired lawyer.
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One Response to Winter’s Solitude

  1. Thomas W Jones says:

    I really enjoyed your morning walk in “Winter’s solitude.” Seems like I was right there with you! Looking forward to wearing the “heavy” type coats a few more times before the birds really start chattering.

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