Snow Piercers

Snowdrops are the first flowers to bloom in the winter here. You can’t really call them spring flowers when they pop up in February, or even January some years. They are not natives, but they naturalize well and are not invasive. I planted them my first autumn here. In more than 35 years, their clumps have expanded and thickened. They seem to come up a little earlier after their first few years in this climate. Last year, I saw several blooms on Twelfth Night, January 6. This year, it was closer to the end of January, and I had to brush leaves away from the magic spot by a tall stone where they bloom earliest to see the white buds rising from the earth.

In my yard, the most reliable spot for early snowdrop sightings is between a walnut and a cedar. They emerge triumphant there and hang above the snow until the thaw begins, attracting bees on sunny days. They spring up so early that shade does not hinder their growth. I planted a row of snowdrop bulbs across a sunny flowerbed several decades ago. Those bloom latest of all, although they form a bushy row, slashing through a bed of periwinkle. Their blossoms often last through March, and sometimes into April.

A friend who spent a sabbatical year in the Netherlands told me that a field near his house bloomed white as snow in February. To spread so far, the colony must have been several hundred years old. I lived in Luxembourg for a year, long ago. The houses on my block all faced the street, with a large central courtyard divided among individual lots within the interior walls. In February white patches sprang up all through the middle of the block, jumping fences and dotting each garden with silver-green snow. My landlady brought me a small bouquet from her garden. She told me their name in French: perce-neige, snow-piercers. Some people say it's bad luck to bring the blooms inside, but that little nosegay delighted me.

Snowdrops seem to be overlooked at fall bulb-planting time. They often appear in the last few pages of catalogs under the heading “Others,” lost among reams of tulips and daffodils. Even among my gardening and beekeeping friends, I still meet people who do not grow them. I’ve taken to buying bulbs in multiples of 50 in the fall and giving them away to anyone who is willing to start hunting for flowers in February.

There are 75 varieties of galanthus, but only a few are readily available. They are members of the amaryllis family, native to Eurasia; their botanical name means “milk-white.” They thrive in cold weather and tolerate warmer winters. Deer and rabbits don’t eat them. They can be transplanted “in the green,” as soon as the blooms have withered in spring. They usually appear a good month before the crocuses and the native wildflowers, providing early forage for bees. Best of all for idiot gardeners like me, they are just about foolproof to grow. Discovering their bending blossoms when the snow begins to melt revives my spirit every year.

Deep Snow

In the days before the storm, we laid in supplies along with everybody else. We tried to shop in off hours to avoid long checkout lines. We called and emailed friends to delay plans. We restacked wood and hauled it inside by the wheelbarrow load. I dug hand warmers and yak trax out of storage.

The day before the front moved in was halcyon, warm as the coming of spring under a south wind. It was a chance to get all the outside work done, but I spent at least half the day playing in the woods. At sunset the sky split open to let the cold front striate the west, layering its colors like a painter. TV weather forecasts predicted 10 inches of snow and ran line after line of closings.

At dawn the sky was white and still, but the snow held off for several hours. It began like gossamer, barely visible in the air. It came down all day long, light and dry and fine. We carried a few more loads of wood inside. I replenished the bird feeders, even though raccoons often try to yank them down after dark. Deer are also fond of sunflower seeds, we discovered. Their agile tongues slip delicately into the ports.

Snow fell for a day and a night. A deep line of cloven hoof prints led to empty bird feeders in the morning. The main deer trail lay unused and pristine when I walked it that afternoon. The next day, many of my footprints held new hoof marks. Velvet noses had delved deep to graze on the liriope, a ground cover the deer ignore when it's clear.

With school canceled, the county road crews took their time plowing. (School bus drivers insist on clear roads. The guys who drive snowplows dig out the bus routes first, intimidated by the gals who drive buses.) The neighbors plowed the lane with a tractor. ATVs roared over the fields. The roads were deserted.

Walking in falling snow can transport you to an alternate reality. Edges blur and waver. Shapes shift. Sounds soften. You begin to listen with your skin. The spaces between trees are portals. Cedars bend under gathering clouds. Underbrush becomes lace. Stillness drifts to unsuspected depths. The timber holds silence. Safe below, the earth holds a promise of snowdrops.

Late Autumn

At this time of year, days in the 50s are a gift. Meteorological winter begins in December, but some years fall lingers a while. Rain and snow are forecast in a couple of days, but for now the skies are blue. I’m better prepared for winter this year than many other years. I have two pairs of fairly decent boots and a coat that’s not only warm but a shade of red-orange likely to convince hunters that I am not a deer. Rifle season opens the same day the snow is predicted.

I’m clearing brush and deadwood from a grove of hickory and oak on the north hillside, within sight of the county road. The neighbors are busy, too, taking advantage of the warm weather, driving ATVs and tractors back and forth. They are the norm here; I’m the one swanning around in the timber pretending to be a druid.

Last year a large red oak tree came down, falling from the roots, leaving a small grotto where it came out of the earth. I pile brush and branches around the spot, leaving one log as a barrier. This is the kind of place that was once considered an entrance to the Underworld. Scrub woodlands in the Great Plains do not usually run to caves, but any hole in the ground will do in a pinch. I’ll leave my first offering today, a fallen oak branch with still-green leaves. If I am respectful, one day I may be allowed to enter the caverns below the surface, to journey in the land of the ancestors.

This cold season promises new life, even before the year turns toward spring. Crows race overhead in flocks, shouting insults at jays and titmice. Cedars raise evergreen branches, lighting the woodlands. Barred owls call in the afternoon. Cutleaf grape ferns have sent up new seed spikes above their purple foliage.

The sun drops low early this close to the solstice. On the north side of the hill I can feel the change in the air by mid-afternoon. In the last few days I’ve opened the way to a couple of deer trails and discovered that the area I’d like to clear is about twice as large as I had imagined. So far I haven’t even attempted to clear out the buck brush and greenbriar. I’ll leave the gooseberry thickets alone.

What I really want to accomplish here is to create a place where I can stand at the center and turn from north to north, from oak to hickory and back, looking from earth to sky, from the gravel road to the rough hilltop. I want to watch the sun climb higher as the winter grows colder. I want to see the spring begin with tiny signs at first, bright yellow buds on the hickories, the smallest changes in the wind from day to day.

I want to greet the seasons here, but also the unexpected bounty of the out-of-season. Warm days in fall, sudden freezes in spring, sharp winds and blue skies are all welcome. The weather twists and twines through the seasons like deer trails through the timber, like wild grape vines on the trees. I want to turn with the year. I want to meet each surprise with open eyes.

Bitternut Hickory

Sometimes the timber makes me feel like an idiot. I’m a neophyte at taxonomy. After a few years of trying to decipher which tree is which, I suspect I’ll always be a neophyte at taxonomy. I’m embarrassed to admit how long I lived here without figuring out the difference between elm and hackberry.

Shagbark Hickory

This fall the bitternut hickories took me by complete surprise. I had recognized shagbark hickory early on. (It has shaggy bark, hence the name.) Not being in the habit of eating random nuts off the ground, I had not identified the bitternut trees until I walked into the grove on the north slope above the road.

Bitternut is the tallest native hickory here, growing on hillsides and along streams. Squirrels store and eat its bitter-tasting, heart-shaped nuts. Carya cordiformis shares a plant family — and a dryad — with the walnut. It can hybridize with the pecan, producing sweet nuts called hicans. (Hybridization is one reason that I have little hope for myself as a taxonomist.)

When European settlers took this land, hickory and oak were the primary forest trees. Walking the timber would have been easier then, the undergrowth not as thick with rampant buckbrush and greenbriar, and invasive honeysuckle yet to be introduced. Oak-hickory groves, like the small patch on my north hillside, opened the woods to sun, allowing shafts of light to penetrate to the forest floor.

Oak and Hickory

The shagbarks turn brilliant gold in early fall. By the time they’ve faded to brown, the bitternuts take up the theme, creating a canopy of sunlight at the roof of the forest. Walking into a grove of bitternut hickories in autumn, you enter the rarified air of Helios. The smooth trunks tower like the Colossus of Rhodes before the earthquake. The leaves are light incarnate.

Light feeds the leaves. The leaves feed the tree for a season, then turn the color of light and drift to the ground. The tree holds the light. When I gather kindling or deadwood for a fire, I collect sunlight. When I burn it, I release light into flame. I warm my house with the fire of the sun.

“The sun works every day and there’s no rest
for him or for his horses once
the rose-fingered dawn leaves the ocean waters
and begins to scale the firmament.
For with night the sun is swept across the waves
in a hollow cup of gleaming gold,
a wondrous bed with wings, forged by Hephaistos;
it speeds him sleeping over salt foam
from the Hesperides to the Ethiopian desert.
There his fleet chariot and horses wait
till Dawn comes, early child of morning.”
            — Mimnermos, tr. Willis Barnstone

Feral Season

Autumn is the wildest season in the timber. Winds rise. Leaves and dust and pollen take to the air. Black raspberry canes root wherever gravity leads them. Paths that were clear become thickets. Fallen logs bar trails. Leaves land in my hair, and burrs cling to my socks. Barred owls call in the afternoon; great horned owls hoot before dawn. Geese go over, honking. This is the flying moon, when branches are stripped bare and witches sweep the sky.

Italian legends tell of a witch who walks in the woods and along the roadsides, muttering to herself. Sometimes she stops a stranger to hitch a ride or bum a cigarette. You might meet her in the market, mumbling as she glares at the produce. If you are rude to her you will be cheated, but if you are kind you might return home to find a basket of apples by your door.

She was once a goddess or a nymph. Her name is Feronia, from the Latin word for wild, savage, feral. In Rome she accepted the thank-offerings of freed slaves. Outside the city, in her temple at Terracina, fleeing slaves could find sanctuary. She lives in the woods and gives shelter to wild things. She rewards generosity and punishes cruelty. When autumn briars tangle the forest paths, Feronia is guarding the wilderness.

A friend of mine is a lifelong fan of Marvel comics and graphic novels. He prefers myths that are inked in broad, clear strokes, expressing plain, universal truths. I’m more of a poetry fan; I like peeling back layers of the onion to reveal more layers of ambiguity and maybe even meaning. I like my myths gnarled and leafy and branching out in unexpected directions. He prefers statuary: unambiguous, beautiful and stately. We’ve often looked at each other with great curiosity and slight understanding, but really, we’re aware that we are not at odds. If he had not asked me to research the Roman Goddess Libertas, I would never have discovered Feronia.

from www.sacred-texts.com

Libertas and Feronia back each other on the same coin, like spirit and matter, each only a breath, an idea, away from the other. Like Castor and Polydeuces, the brothers of Helen and Clytemnestra, one is immortal and pure, the other mortal and holy. Like Romulus, who founded a city, and Remus, son of a she-wolf running free on the mountainsides, they are twins in immortality and sacred mortality.

My woods are not pristine. My wilderness has been violated many times. The feral landscape has reclaimed that violation. The timber is full of ticks and mosquitoes, burrs, poison ivy and devil’s darning needles. Feronia walks here, muttering to herself, cursing and blessing as she wills. Her footsteps rustle the leaves at my back. I thank her for my freedom when I meet her. More often, I mutter to myself and shuffle on my way. Sometimes I almost glimpse my own shadow.