In The Bleak Mid-Winter

In the bleak mid-winter,
Softly winds made moan
Earth lay hard as iron,
Water like a stone.

These are the first few lines of the Christmas carol, based on a poem by Christina Rossetti.

This evening, watching the News about the extreme cold weather on the East Coast of the USA, I thought of this poem. They showed aerial views of those attractive housing estates, that are shown in films like "Home Alone", or "Wisteria Drive" in Desperate Housewives.

We were told the temperature had gone to below -45 and everyone had been told to stay indoors. Skin exposed to those temperatures would suffer permanent damage after 15 minutes.
The landscape looked very bleak, frozen and inhospitable.
There was no sign of the bright lights usually adorning American homes at this time of year.
It would be comforting to think of everyone in those houses, the freezer full, the central heating on, a roaring fire in the grate.

I thought about all the places we had visited in New England on a coach tour.
There were so many isolated and remote settlements. It was late Autumn (or Fall), and we were the last of the tourists coming to admire the colours, before the Winter, we were referred to as" the leaf peepers"
Every store or little town, or farm house we passed, was preparing for the harsh Winter.
We stopped at a Maple syrup farm. A very entertaining farmer showed us slides of the countryside in Winter. They were completely cut off, deep snow all around. He said the Spring was even worse. Then, they are nearly drowned in mud, as the snow melts.

Nothing had prepared us for the vastness of America. Looking out of the plane window, the immensity of the forests and woods all the way down from Canada is incredible. The forests are so thick and the trees so tall, that at the start of each trail leading into them there is a book to sign. The Rangers need to know who went in and make sure they come out again. It is impossible for rescue helicopters to see anything.

I read a book by Stephen King, that tells the story of a 9 year old girl, who gets lost in the forests of the Appalachian trail. It is a very moving and heart-warming tale of how she stays sane and survives, helped by thinking of her favourite baseball player Tom Gordon.

As we neared New York and saw the settlements of New England, they looked very vulnerable and small.





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