February second, Candlemas day:
half your wood, and half your hay.
Half the winter has passed away,
we’ll eat our supper by the light of day!
Shirley Jones, 90, stacks wood Jan. 11, 2021, at his home in Buckfield. Jones had four cord of split wood delivered in preparation for the next winter. “I have plenty of time. When I get tired, I go inside. It will be good and dry by next fall,” he said. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal, File
Forget the customary presentation of the groundhog and his shadow test – according to the old adage, on Feb. 2, Candlemas Day, it’s all about the pantry.
It’s about whether we will have enough. Here on the seasonal continental divide, you look down the western slope and wonder if you have sufficient resources to reach the coast of spring. There’ll be no more harvesting. Did you stockpile sufficient firewood? Will the livestock have their hay? The moment is about anticipation, and about our concept of “enough.”
Wood and hay are the benchmarks of a former time: practical, agrarian and fundamental to survival of farmer and livestock in the Northern Hemisphere. However, even we nonfarmers should assess the pantry. Enough fuel to keep warm and fed through winter’s second act? How’s that oil tank gauge looking, to say nothing of this week’s price of No. 2 fuel oil?
What other kinds of fuel and food are we drawing down? No, my wood stove will not go hungry. Yes, half the woodbox is empty – however, half is full. Looks like the mice will also have enough. They’re enjoying life mid-level amid my logs, as revealed by their half-gnawed acorns, discovered as I bring wood indoors. Their nests of shredded grass hold fast, too. I hope they haven’t infiltrated my cozy domain. I like boundaries.
My imaginary horses and ruminant cows graze comfortably on food for thought. There’s always enough. But I do take inventory of my actual larder and last summer’s frozen blueberries. Am I sufficiently stocked to make it to ice-out, or whatever you use as the boundary of winter and starting line of spring? Blueberries are my solar energy of choice, a concentrated nugget of August sunny days preserved like amethyst fruit in amber, awaiting measured doling of cold weather comfort in pies, pancakes and muffins. By the wood stove, naturally. Enough? Yet to be determined. One critter’s acorn stash is another’s blueberries is another’s hay. Factor in appetite and critter size.
These are just the literal provisions. Consider the figurative pantry we’re building up and spending down, as we inhabit the season of foresight and hindsight – and test both. We look backward toward supply, and forward toward use and resupply, an equation that must balance. The solution is simply enough, a moving target.
Winter draws us inside, the season with sharp lines of demarcation between inner and outer; of closed windows; the season of torpor and hibernation and contemplative restoration; of longing and observing, watching that frozen outer landscape for signs of the wane of cold and snow; of ice-out; of buds and returning songbirds.
So, we are halfway through the work of our hibernation, watching our inner, emotional pantries. While keeping warm, and sharing all that hay, literal or figurative, with our “livestock,” we’ve been doing something restorative. What are the wood and blueberries of our inner lives? To each his own. A cord or two of books will do for me. One man’s woodpile is another’s neglected reading pile.
Yes, spring and summer will come – it’s a certainty, thanks to celestial mechanics – and the resumption of wood and hay stockpiling for next winter. The sun is on its way back north, where it will warm the blueberry barrens, too, and the next annual ring on our next Christmas tree. But for now, we throw another log on the fire and mix another batch of muffins; sip tea with satisfaction and longing, and count the added minutes of sunlight this week. The reading pile still casts a long shadow, I’m afraid. Enough said.
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