Winter Dreaming

 
"Beauty at low temperatures is beauty" was Russian poet and Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky’s response to seeing Venice blanketed by a rare snowfall. This passage can be found in Watermark (1992), his short, evocative treatise describing his frequent winter home since 1973 and where he is now buried following his death in 1996 . . . a city once described as "of dreamlike beauty that banishes nightmares." It was a place where he might seek solace from the disturbing facets of daily existence.

Brodsky describes the extraordinary winter light, "savoring its touch, the caress of the infinity whence it came. An object, after all, is what makes infinity private." This stands in broad contrast to Rainier Maria Rilke’s impressions eighty years earlier while walking on the seaside cliffs just a short distance across the Adriatic at the Duino Castle near Trieste. There "beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are / just able to endure . . . ." (Duino Elegies). I prefer Brodsky’s outlook.

If you have not read Brodsky’s little gem, you really must. Especially if you have ever spent any time in the ephemeral and enigmatic place that is Venice. "Better yet, read it and open your eyes and other senses to its encyclopedic wonders," John Updike wrote in his New Yorker review upon publication. "Another dividend," Updike continues, "will be how it may open your eyes to actually see the places you live, work or visit other than Venice! Anticipate a change in your comprehension of life."

Brodsky was no stranger to the aspects of winter, even in Venice. "Seasons are metaphors for available continents, and winter is always somewhat antarctic, even here." He was born in Leningrad (St. Petersburg today) in 1940 and he and his family survived the hunger and deprivations of the Nazi siege of that city from 1941 until 1944. He ran afoul of the Soviet regime and was exiled to the Archangel region of northern Russia in the mid-1960s. He was later sentenced to hard labor in the Soviet gulag system and eventually fled Russia, living for a brief time in Vienna and London before settling in the United States in the early 1970s where he taught at several universities and college. But there was always time to visit Venice, particularly in the winter.

Like Brodsky’s Venice, I have my own special winter place . . . the Great North Woods of northern New England . . . to which I frequently return dreaming of winter light. "I have never seen a grander or more beautiful sight than the northern woods in winter." With these words a young Theodore Roosevelt described his regular sojourns to a wilderness camp in Maine’s Aroostook County. I could not agree with him more.

In addition to our regular months-long summer hiatus in Maine, for the past several years I have also been making regular trips to far northern New Hampshire during the height of winter (which also include detours into nearby Vermont, Maine and Québec). Trekking the ridges and hollows of the Great North Woods, among the chain of Connecticut Lakes hard on the Québec border, has proven a palliative for whatever ails me at the time, and it has helped me put my life into perspective on more than one occasion. I went there to ponder plans to retire only to return home confident it was time to move on with the rest of my life. Regardless of the season, this region has become my "panic hole" which, as defined by Gerald Vizenor, is a physical or mental place offering respite from the real or imagined pressures and stresses of daily life and the responsibilities that go with them. Who could not use one of these? Yet it has been the winter visits when I have connected most to this region. Much as Brodsky did in Venice.

Brodsky was onto something when he penned "Beauty at low temperatures is beauty." There is something about trekking through the deep snows of these quiet northern New England woodlands where nothing stirs but the cold winds. Nothing is heard but the creaking and scraping of barren branches and the crunching of snow beneath one’s feet. Or sitting by a warm fire in the lodge and watching snow devils swirling across an iced-over lake. The temperature, even during the day, frequently plunges into the deep double digits below zero. Yes, Brodsky was correct. There is something inherently beautiful in all of this.

As I write this the snow is falling steady across the region. I regret that I am not making my annual trip north this year.

Like years past, there has been a heavy accumulation of snow across the region since before Christmas, and despite a couple quick thaws, the snows have returned along with frigid sub-zero temperatures well-known in these parts this time of year. It was just not in the stars this time around. But this does not preclude me from dreaming about a northern New England winter with its special lineaments of light and the beauty of its low temperatures. And why? I refer back to Brodsky when asked why he close Venice during the winter. He recalled the " . . . lonely monument to Francesco Querini and his two huskies carved out of Istrian stone, similar, I think, in its hue, to what he saw last, dying, on his ill-fated journey to the North Pole, now listening to the Giardini's rustle of evergreens in the company of Wagner and Carducci." I go because there is magical music in the air that banishes nightmares. That’s why.