The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.

- William Cullen Bryant

I am not a “winter person.”

When my friends begin to talk about unpacking the skis in anticipation of weekends at Beech or Sugar Mountain, I am filled with what some melodramatic writers call "“a dark foreboding.” (Some of my friends are obviously more economically and psychologically stable than I am.) Where they sniff the air and talk about snow, fire places and mulled wine, I watch the mountains as they are leached of color, note the lengthening afternoon shadows and get intimations of dread. The nights are too long and sometimes sleepless. Something dark and menacing takes up residence in my living room like an uninvited guest.

The doctors call it SAD — seasonal affective disorder — and although it could be associated with any season, it is most commonly related to winter. As the sun’s warmth diminishes, the victim’s depression increases. Individual responses to this condition are remarkably varied. I’ve always envied those acquaintances who simply depart for warmer clines — down to Florida or off to the Bahamas. But for those of us with limited resources and ties to the region, options are limited and often ineffectual. I rent more videos, turn the sound up on the stereo and become a patron of brightly-lit, all-night establishments like Huddle Houses or Seven-Elevens.

A friend of mine used to fill my house with “sunshine bulbs,” an artificial light that actually resembled sunlight. When she arrived each fall with a carton of bulbs, potted plants and incense, I was always reminded of the traditional defenses against vampires and werewolves. Instead of garlic, mirrors and holy water, I was armed with 75-watt sunshine, lavender-scented candles and Christmas lilies. It helped.

Regardless, there are those inevitable times when my defenses are down and I am painfully vulnerable. Like F. Scott Fitzgerald, my “dark night of the soul” comes at 3 a.m. I awake with a profound sense of isolation and helplessness. There is nothing to do but get up, play Nina Simone, look at seed catalogues and wait for daylight. At times like this, I have a sense of embattlement — that I am some medieval warrior, peering into the darkness from a stone tower. The drawbridge is up and the gates are locked. Something is out there and it is moving closer.

I grew up hearing stories about how the people of Ireland, Scotland and the isolated mountains of northern Europe used to peer anxiously at the winter sky. In ancient times, when they perceived the sun as a great wheel, they saw the ebbing of light as proof that the wheel was slowing. On the night of the winter solstice, it halted, frozen and wrapped in sheets of ice. Perhaps the world had ended — spring would never come again — unless mankind could assist the sun. So, they would light fires, carry torches, fill the night with shouts and flickering light. Folklorists called it “sympathetic magic.” At some point, when the hill-tops were wreathed in crowns of fire, the wheel trembled. Amid shouts and processions of flaming torches, it finally... moved. The world would live for another year, clothed in vegetation and life.

Think of it. All of those ancient folk, afflicted with SAD!

So, I mimic the ancients with my candles, my fireplace and my sunshine bulbs. The Platters and “The Great Pretender” thunder from my stereo and the rest of my troops stand ready — Ray Charles, Sinatra and Carly Simon; Mozart, Merle Haggard and Randy Newman. All the lights are on, including the porch light. The seed catalogues are stacked by my rocking chair and my flue roars with oaken heat. The cats and I are warm as we wait ... for the wheel to turn.

(Gary Carden is a Sylva writer whose recent book, Mason Jars in the Flood, was voted Book of the Year by the Appalachian Writers Association. He can be reached at gcarden498@aolcom)

 

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