Winter count

“ Roughly, the summertime may be considered to last from May 25th to September 1st, the rainy season until the freeze-up in late November, the steady winter from early December until early April, and the thaw-season or spring to fill out the cycle until late May. The summer may break into the rainy season in August, and the big freeze may come very early or very late. The winter may be extreme, variable or steady, the latter mood being most comfortable; and the thaw season may be short and decisive or a lingering discouraging clasp on the garments of winter. ”

“ The reason is obvious: the rapidity with which settlers are clearing the forest, and opening the face of the earth to the light of day, gives to the sun’s influence a much greater extent of country annually; as a natural consequence, the snows melt more early and rapidly, and the winters become proportionably short. When the colony was but thinly inhabited, the winter commenced early in November, and continued generally until the end of April; latterly, however, there has been no dead winter until Christmas, and the spring has usually opened in the beginning of April. ”

“ The sky was of a bright, clear blue, and sometimes the sun shone with considerable power. No one would think of going out with a great coat in winter, excepting for a long drive through the bush or at night. In fact, the season [Pg 108] can scarcely be termed winter; it is rather like a prolonged autumn; extending from May to August. Snow never falls,—at least, I never saw any during the two winters I spent in the colony; and although there were occasional slight frosts at night in the month of August, I never observed the ice thicker than a wafer. ”

“ The winter in the northeastern portion of the transition province may be said to be the most characteristic feature of the climate, as it is the one that is most pronounced and exceptional, when a comparison is made with other thickly peopled portions of the continent. The period of cold and snow each year is long, extending in general from November to March, and the coming of the flowers and birds in spring is frequently much delayed. The long cold winters have a decided influence on plant and animal life, and in a marked way modify the lives of men. ”

“ Early in December, winter came upon us in earnest; snow fell to such a depth that we were fairly shut out from the whole world, and so suddenly as to find us unprepared. It was difficult and almost impossible, on [Pg 136] account of the deep snow, to procure wood sufficient to keep up the constant fires necessary on account of the intense cold. We had no mail, no telegraph, no news from our supplies. ”

“ It avails nothing that these springs and outflowing brooks teem with fish, frogs, salamanders, and spiders; nor does it matter that the sun gives us summer heat and that birds throng the underbrush as in nesting days; still it is winter. This is the crowning fact that colors every thought, and though we can not step but we crush a flower, winter will not be ignored. Nor would I have it so. January has its merits as well as June, and I hail with pleasure that spot where frost has gained a foothold. ”

“ In line with Roaring Bill's forecast, the weather cleared for a brief span, and then winter shut down in earnest. Successive falls of snow overlaid the earth with a three-foot covering, loose and feathery in the depths of the forest, piled in hard, undulating windrows in the scattered openings. Daily the cold increased, till a half-inch layer of frost stood on the cabin panes. ”

“ Potato-digging, apple-picking, thrashing, the gathering of innumerable seeds, must be done before winter; and yet to-day is like a despatch from December to announce that snow and ice and wind are to be just as cold this winter as they were the last. ”

“ Outside, however, the cold continues vigorously, the thermometer on the 31st of December dropping to -15° and to -13° in the glacière. If the production of the ice stops, it is not the cold which is wanting, but the other element, the one which as our former study showed, is the most rarely exact at the « 204 » meeting. The winter is only favorable on condition that it offers alternating periods of freezing and thawing ”

“ The first sight of northern waterfowl, far up in the air, retreating from Labrador and the short, Arctic summer, is always to us like the declaration: "Summer is gone; winter is behind us; it will soon be upon you." At last come the late days of November. All is gone,—frosts reap and glean more sharply every night.
8. A few weeks bring earnest winter. Then begin to dawn other delights. The bracing air, the clean snow-paths, the sled and sleigh, the revelation of forms that all summer were grass-hidden ”

“ It would be very interesting to get the statistics of revivals and murders, and find how many of them have been committed in the spring. But for undistracted people winter is one long delight of the eye. In other lands one knows the snow as a nuisance that comes and goes, and is sorely man-handled and messed at the last. Here it lies longer on the ground than any crop—from November to April sometimes—and for three months life goes to the tune of sleigh-bells, which are not, as a Southern visitor once hinted, ostentation, but safeguards. The man who drives without them is not loved. ”

“ The north wind may blow, for it is by no means a cheerless prospect, this wood-and-meadow world of [Pg 74] mine in the gray November light. The grass-blades are wilting, the old leaves are falling; but no square foot of greensward will the winter kill, nor a single tree perhaps in all my wood-lot. There will be little less of life next April because of this winter. The winter birds will suffer most, and a few may die.
Last February, I came upon two partridges in the snow, dead of hunger and cold. ”

“ The mountain summits are, at the moment we write, covered with a lamb’s-wool-like coating of virgin snow, and the air has become so chill and raw that we were fain some days ago to don our winter habiliments for the season. We have no right or reason to complain, however; a finer summer and autumn were never known in the Highlands, and since winter must come some time or other, it is better that it should come in season. ”

“ With the exception of a fairly heavy fall just before Christmas everything that has since fallen from the sky⁠—below four thousand feet⁠—has been rain, or rainy sleet with a few flakes of snow mixed here and there in midair, enough to permit hope though hope as yet unfulfilled. Although a sprinkling of visions come out at the end of November and early in December expecting to find the winter already in full sway, the majority know that the real snow hardly comes before the New Year. ”

“ Although winter and summer are in reality the only seasons, yet the inhabitants235 fancy they have spring when about noon the rays of the sun begin to make themselves felt, which generally takes place about the middle of March, but this so-called spring has frequent night-frosts of twenty degrees. Their autumn is reckoned from the time when the rivers begin to freeze over, that is, from the first days of September, when a cold of thirty degrees is already by no means uncommon. ”

“ It is a singular circumstance—and one of which the meteorologic men must give us the resolution—that the seasons of the Eastern and Western Continents balance themselves so accurately as they do. Thus, the severe winter which, leaning from the Arctic Circle, has touched our Continent with an icy right hand, has kindled with a warm left, the north of Europe into a premature Spring. The journalists tell us of flowers blooming in Norway, through all the latter half of February; and the winter in Paris has proved as sham a winter, as their Republic is sham republic. ”

“ And again, in winter, peculiarly fine pictures, characteristic of the season, are presented here when, after a plentiful fall of snow, the sleighs are on the move without number and in infinite variety; or when, on the contrary, each long white vista, east, west, north, and south, glistening, perhaps, under a clear December moon, is a scene almost wholly of still life—scarcely a man or beast abroad, so keen is the motionless air, the mercury having shrunk down some way below the zero-line of Fahrenheit. ”

“ There is much less rain, which comes in showers, rather than in a steady fall; and is confined to the months between September and June. Occasionally, snow falls to the depth of a few inches; and in some winters has remained on the ground a number of weeks. The heat of summer and the cold of winter are each more extreme, but not at their highest or lowest degrees so trying as the same amount of heat or cold would be in a moister atmosphere. ”

“ But, as I was saying, to change quarters here as late as November is a little difficult, for the wise ones seek to get housed for the winter by October: they select the sunny apartments, get on the double windows, and store up wood. The plants are tied up in the gardens, the fountains are covered over, and the inhabitants go about in furs and the heaviest winter clothing long before we should think of doing so at home. And they are wise: the snow comes early, and, besides, a cruel fog, cold as the grave and penetrating as remorse, comes down out of the near Tyrol. ”

“ The January thaw may come and be followed by open weather, as so many are prophesying, but we have had sleighing and everything else worth while that winter can offer. First we had a week of cold weather ranging from zero to twenty above. Every day it was cloudy and threatening snow, and enough fell to cover the ground. Then the papers predicted a warm wave and the trouble began. On the morning when the change was due snow began to fall in big flakes, and there was a moderate wind from the south-west. ”

“ The hard Winters are commonly the fore-runners of pleasant Spring-times, and fertile Summers, being iudged likewise to make much for the health of our English bodies: It is found to be more healthfull for such as shall adventure thither, to come towards Winter, than the hot Summer; the Climate in Winter is commonly cold and dry, the Snow lies long, which is thought to be no small nourishing to the ground. ”

“ As early as April, and sometimes the last of March, the high ascending sun begins to melt the snow on the south of mountain and hill sides, flowing intervales and lowlands, forming considerable rivers, where at other seasons of the year the insignificant little brook wound its stealthy course among the alders, hardly of a capacity to float the staff of a traveler ”

“ The experience of last January, with its vicissitudes of weather, reflecting the peculiarity of the whole winter of 1859-60, ought to be enough to warn us against ever again allowing rapid and extreme alternations of weather to do us more mischief than is unavoidable. It should not be in the power of a speedy thaw after snow to lay under water more than a very small proportion of the soil of Great Britain ”

“ The darkness of winter puts an end to all sledging, and the excessive cold of spring renders it difficult. Summer makes it impossible by breaking up the land-ice, or impedes it by transforming the snow into thaw-water and sludge. Next to autumn, therefore, the latter part of March, all April, and a part of May, are most adapted for this purpose. ”

“ What can exceed the dazzling splendour of a rising sun, on the trees and bushes, after a night of rain and freezing, when every branch appears like a shining crystal? A prospect grand indeed!
The severe frosts of Winter, with the agitated atmosphere, dispel the sickening fumes which arise from heated and stagnant pools, and decaying vegetation.
This gives health and vigour to the body, and an it were, new spring to thought. Who but has observed the lively sensations of body and mind on a clear frosty morning in winter? ”

“ There seems, in truth, to be a certain fitness in the turning of men's thoughts at the spring season to the heights of the mountains, where, as nowhere else, the cares and ailments of the winter time are forgotten; and it is a noticeable fact that these upland districts are now as thronged with visitors during Easter week as in August itself. ”

“ As a rule, the comparative dryness of the atmosphere neutralizes the severest effect of excessive cold. The snowfall is extremely light during most of the winter, but as spring approaches precipitation becomes greater, and there are frequently heavy snowfalls in February and March. ”

“ I believe that the writer who described the climate of this country as being "nine months snow and three months winter" was not far from the truth. In June the temperature of our rooms registered just above freezing point, in July we were enveloped in continuous fog, and in August we are having snow.
Such a tragic event has occurred. Our lettuce has been eaten by the Mission cow! You know how hard it is to get anything to grow here. ”

“ For the division into the summer period of vegetation and winter with its snow and ice it is superfluous to give examples: the above-quoted description of the year of the Labrador Eskimos is a typical instance. Swanton and Boas state that certain Indian tribes of N. W. America divide the year into two equal parts of six months each, summer extending from April to September, and winter from October to March [231] . The Comanches reckon by the cold and the warm seasons [232] . I give a few instances from districts in which a winter of this nature does not exist. ”

“ While yet it is cold January, and snow and ice are thick and solid, the prudent landlord comes from the village to get ice to cool his summer drink; impressively, even pathetically wise, to foresee the heat and thirst of July now in January,—wearing a thick coat and mittens! when so many things are not provided for. It may be that he lays up no treasures in this world which will cool his summer drink in the next. ”

“ There are also January, February and March, the months winter really settles to his task and delivers, as he will, snow storms, or spells of abnormally cold weather that make the house hard to heat and may freeze pipes. ”