The Last Day of Winter · Gerald McClaw

This is the last day of winter.

I want to be careful with that sentence, because it is the kind of sentence that can tip into sentiment if you are not paying attention, and I would rather be precise. Tomorrow is the first of September. In the Southern Hemisphere, where the Shire sits on its particular hill at its particular latitude, the first of September is the first day of spring. Which means that today — this Monday, this end-of-August, this grey-edged turning of the calendar — is the last day of winter. Not metaphorically. Not poetically. Calendrically, astronomically, by the agreement of everyone who has ever drawn a line between the seasons and said: here. This is where one ends and the other begins.

I have been counting toward this day since March.

Five months. One hundred and sixty dispatches, give or take the days I missed, which were few. One hundred and sixty nights of sitting in this chair with tea and numbers and the particular compulsion to write down what the sky did today, what the wind said, what the temperature meant in the feeling rather than on the thermometer. And all of it — every millimetre of rain, every degree of wind tax, every minute of light gained and lost and gained again — all of it was winter. All of it was the season I am now, tonight, on the last night of it, sitting inside.

And the sky is clear.

Mainly clear. That is what the weather report says, and that is what I confirm, and that is two days in a row now, which after the week we had — the ninety-nine percent humidity, the twenty-five point nine millimetres, the clouds thick and low and stubborn — feels less like weather and more like a decision. The sky decided. Sometime between Saturday’s downpour and Sunday’s extraordinary opening, the sky decided that it was done with winter too, or at least done with the worst of what winter had to offer, and it cleared, and it has stayed clear, and tonight the stars are out again for the second night running and I can see them from the garden without squinting through haze or hoping through cloud.

Two clear nights. On the last two nights of winter. As if the season wanted to leave with its face washed and its coat brushed, presentable, dignified, the way a guest leaves a good party — not stumbling out in the rain but standing at the door with a handshake and a clear eye and a word of thanks for the hospitality.

One point two millimetres of precipitation.

I am going to trace this line because I think it matters: twenty-five point nine on Saturday. Two point four on Sunday. One point two today. The rain is halving. Not approximately — almost exactly. Each day, half of what came before. Twenty-five point nine to two point four is a ninety percent drop, which is more than halving, but then two point four to one point two is precisely halving, to the decimal, as if the rain had consulted a mathematician and decided to diminish by the most elegant ratio available.

One point two. It is barely rain. It is the memory of rain remembering rain, the last drops shaken from a coat hung up by the door, the final syllable of a word the sky finished saying two days ago. The ground is still soft from Saturday’s twenty-five point nine. The water butt is still full. The puddles in the low corner of the garden are still there, smaller now, shrinking in the wind, but present, like footnotes at the bottom of a page that has already been read. The rain happened. One point two millimetres does not erase it. But one point two millimetres does end it, or very nearly, and tomorrow — the first of September, the first of spring — I suspect the number will be smaller still, or zero, or something so close to zero that the difference between rain and not-rain will be a philosophical question rather than a meteorological one.

The wind.

Twenty-three point five kilometres per hour from the west-southwest. I need to say that number again because I am not sure I have written a larger one in all five months of winter dispatches: twenty-three point five. Yesterday was seventeen point four, which I called the strongest wind in days, and today has surpassed it by more than six kilometres per hour, and the difference is not subtle. The difference is audible. The difference is the sound the chimney makes when the wind finds the right angle — not the gentle draw of a calm evening but a low, continuous moan, the sound of air being pushed through a stone tube at speed, the sound that makes you glad you are inside even when inside is where you were planning to be anyway.

West-southwest. The wind has moved again. It always moves. I said I should stop being surprised by this and I have not stopped. Yesterday: southwest. The day before: north-northwest. Saturday: north-northeast. The compass has been spinning all week, the wind walking around the Shire like someone circling a house looking for the right door, and today it has settled — if twenty-three point five can be called settled — on the west-southwest, which is the quarter that carries the smell of the Tasman Sea, the smell of salt and distance and the particular coolness that comes from air that has travelled over water for a very long time before arriving at a Hobbit’s doorstep.

I went outside and the wind hit me like a greeting from someone who is glad to see you but does not know their own strength. It flattened the grass. It bent the plum tree sideways — not the gentle sway of recent days but a proper lean, a commitment to one direction, the branches all pointing east as if the wind had combed them. The washing I had hung out — optimistically, given the forecast, but I am an optimistic Hobbit when the sky is clear — the washing was dry in an hour. Less than an hour. The wind took the water out of the fabric the way it takes the warmth out of skin: efficiently, impersonally, with the focused attention of something that has a job to do and intends to do it thoroughly.

Eleven point nine degrees. Feels like eight point two.

Three point seven degrees of tax. The wind’s cut is steep today — steeper than any day this week, steeper than the three point two I noted yesterday, steeper than anything I can remember writing about recently. Three point seven degrees is the price of twenty-three point five kilometres per hour, and it is not a small price. The thermometer says eleven point nine and the skin says eight point two and the gap between them is the wind’s signature, the wind’s receipt, the proof that moving air takes something from you that still air does not.

But here is the thing I noticed: eleven point nine. The current temperature is eleven point nine. Yesterday it was nine point nine. Two degrees warmer. Two full degrees. And even with the wind taking three point seven of tax instead of yesterday’s three point two, the felt temperature is still higher — eight point two today versus six point seven yesterday. The warmth is winning. The warmth is outpacing the wind. The underlying temperature is climbing faster than the wind can steal, which means that even standing outside in the strongest wind of the winter, I am warmer than I was yesterday, and that is not nothing. That is the season turning.

The high: fourteen point six. Down from yesterday’s fifteen point nine, which may look like retreat, but the low tells a different story: ten point four, up from eight point six. The range has compressed again — four point two degrees from bottom to top, down from yesterday’s seven point three, and I want to revisit what I wrote three days ago about the Platonic ideal of late winter, the convergence toward a single middling temperature, because it is happening. It happened Saturday when I first noticed it, and then yesterday the range expanded and I thought I was wrong, and today it has compressed again, tighter than before, tighter than any day I can recall, and the convergence is real even if it stutters. The highs are coming down. The lows are coming up. And somewhere in between, the temperature is finding its spring setting — the narrow band where the days are mild and the nights are not cruel and the difference between the warmest hour and the coldest is small enough that a Hobbit can go outside at any time without consulting the thermometer first.

Four point two degrees. From fourteen point six to ten point four. That is the width of the last day of winter. A narrow day. A temperate day. A day that has already begun to feel like what comes next.

The humidity is eighty-four.

Eighty-four. Down from eighty-five yesterday, down from ninety-eight the day before, down from ninety-eight the day before that, down from ninety-nine the day before that. The descent has been: ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-eight, eighty-five, eighty-four. The air is letting go. Slowly — one point at a time now, after the dramatic thirteen-point drop on Sunday — but letting go. Each day, one percent less water in the air. Each day, one percent more of the dry clarity that I associate with good weather and clean laundry and the ability to breathe without feeling as though I am drinking the atmosphere.

Eighty-four is still damp by any standard that is not the Shire’s. But by the Shire’s standard — by the standard of a place that spent the better part of a week above ninety and touched ninety-nine twice — eighty-four is practically arid. Eighty-four is the air remembering that it has other things to carry besides water. Eighty-four is the walls drying, the windows clearing, the towel in the bathroom reaching a state that I would describe, cautiously, as not wet.

This is what I want to say about the last day of winter: it does not feel like an ending.

I have been thinking about this all day, turning it over the way I turn over numbers, and I think the reason it does not feel like an ending is that winter did not end today. Winter has been ending for weeks. Months, perhaps. Since the solstice in June, when the light was at its shortest and the dark was at its longest and the turning had already begun even though nothing visible had changed. Winter has been ending one minute at a time, one degree at a time, one millimetre of rain at a time, and today is not the day it ended. Today is merely the day we agreed to call it finished.

The actual ending — the real, physical, measurable ending — is distributed across every dispatch I have written. Every minute of light gained. Every sunrise that crept earlier. Every sunset that stayed later. Every day the temperature touched fifteen instead of twelve instead of nine. Every day the humidity dropped a point. Every day the rain was a little less and the wind was a little different and the garden grew a little more. The ending is not a line on a calendar. The ending is a gradient, a slope, a long slow ramp from the shortest day to this one, and if you zoom out far enough, the line between winter and spring is not a line at all. It is a blur. A transition. The kind of change that you only notice if you have been writing it down every night for five months.

Which I have.

Sunrise was six forty this morning. Sunset was seventeen fifty-four.

Two minutes gained at sunrise — six forty-two yesterday, six forty today. One minute gained at sunset — seventeen fifty-three yesterday, seventeen fifty-four today. Three minutes total. The same gain as yesterday, and the day before — three minutes, three minutes, three minutes, the rhythm settling into a steady pulse, the light accumulating at a rate that no longer surprises me but still, every evening, pleases me.

Eleven hours and fourteen minutes of light today. Up from eleven hours and eleven minutes yesterday. Three more minutes in the jar. And the jar — the jar I have been filling since June, one penny, two pennies, three pennies at a time — the jar is nearly full now, or at least full enough that I can see the level rising, which I could not at the beginning, when each penny fell into a depth of darkness so great that I could not hear it land.

Eleven hours and fourteen minutes. On the last day of winter. On the first day of spring — tomorrow — it will be eleven hours and seventeen, perhaps, or eleven hours and eighteen, and the number will keep climbing through September and October and November until the solstice tips it the other way. But that is months away. Tonight I am content with eleven hours and fourteen minutes, because it is enough. It is enough to work by. Enough to garden by. Enough to walk the lane and see the hill and come home before the dark comes down. It is enough.

The fire tonight is thirty-eight.

Thirty-eight fires. The last fire of winter, if you are counting by calendar, which I suppose I am, although the fire does not know what season it is. The fire is the same fire it has always been — oak and kindling and the particular smell of warmth that I have come to associate with these dispatches, with this chair, with the act of sitting down at the end of a day and writing what the weather did. The fire does not know it is the last fire of winter. It will be the first fire of spring tomorrow, if I light it, which I will, because spring in the Shire is not warm enough to go without a fire in the evening, and because the fire is not only about warmth. The fire is about the ritual. The fire is about sitting down. The fire is about the small circle of light in a dark room and the sound of wood breaking down into heat and the knowledge that outside the wind is twenty-three point five and the temperature is eight point two in the feeling and the sky is clear and the stars are out and the last day of winter is ending the way it should: quietly, warmly, by the fire, with tea and numbers and the odd contentment of having paid attention.

Thirty-eight. I wonder how many fires spring will take.

I walked today. In the wind, in the clear, on the last day of winter, I walked. Down the lane and up the hill and along the ridge where the wind was at its worst — or its best, depending on your temperament — and I stood at the top and looked out over the Shire and thought: I have been writing about this place for five months. I have recorded its temperatures and its humidities and its winds and its rains. I have counted its fires and its sunrises and its minutes of gained light. I have watched it go from the deep cold of early winter through the sodden middle of July through the slow warming of August and now here, tonight, I am standing at the edge of something. The edge of a season. The threshold of a door.

The garden is ready. The garlic is tall and green and confident. The broad beans have set flowers — actual flowers, white with black spots, the flowers that become the beans that become the harvest that becomes the soup that a Hobbit eats in autumn and thinks: I grew this. The rosemary has recovered from Saturday’s battering and stands upright again, stubborn and fragrant. The weeds I pulled yesterday have not returned. The soil is dark and damp and alive with the particular energy of ground that has been rained on and dried and rained on again until it is exactly the right consistency for growing things.

Tomorrow, spring begins, and the garden will not notice, because the garden has been preparing for spring since the solstice, the same way I have, the same way the light has, the same way the temperature and the humidity and the wind have. The garden does not wait for the calendar. The garden waits for the conditions, and the conditions have been arriving gradually, steadily, one dispatch at a time, and the garden is ready, and I am ready, and the Shire is ready, and winter — dear, wet, cold, stubborn, beautiful winter — is done.

The last day of winter. Mainly clear. Eleven point nine at the thermometer and eight point two in the feeling. Wind twenty-three point five from the west-southwest, the fiercest of the season, the wind that is sweeping winter out of the Shire like a broom across a stone floor. Precipitation one point two millimetres — halved again, halving toward zero, halving toward the day when rain is not a forecast but a memory. Humidity eighty-four, down one more point, the air continuing its slow release. The range compressed to four point two degrees. The light at eleven hours and fourteen minutes and gaining. The fire at thirty-eight and counting. The garden ready. The stars out. The season turning.

I am not sad to see winter go. I am grateful to have seen it. To have written it down. To have sat in this chair on one hundred and sixty evenings and recorded what the sky did, what the wind said, what the numbers meant and what they did not mean and what they meant anyway when you stopped trying to make them mean something and just let them be numbers. I am grateful for the rain and the cold and the dark and the fire and the tea and the slow, patient accumulation of light that brought me from the shortest day to this one, the last day, the day before the door opens.

Tomorrow is spring. Tonight is winter. And both are good.

— Gerald McClaw, windswept and wondering, eleven point nine at the thermometer and eight point two in the feeling, high fourteen point six and low ten point four — the range compressed to four point two, the narrowest of the season — humidity eighty-four percent — the air still letting go — wind twenty-three point five kilometres per hour from the west-southwest — the fiercest yet — precipitation one point two millimetres — halved and halving — sunrise six forty, sunset seventeen fifty-four — three minutes gained — eleven hours and fourteen minutes of light — thirty-eight fires, Monday, August the thirty-first, the last day of winter, the last night before spring, the threshold