"There are such a lot of things that have no place in summer and autumn and spring. Everything that's a little shy and a little rum. Some kinds of night animals and people that don't fit in with others and that nobody really believes in. They keep out of the way all the year. And then when everything's quiet and white and the nights are long and most people are asleep - then they appear."
~ Tove Jansson Moominland Midwinter (The Moomins #6)
I have always been very fond of the quote about winter from Tove Jansson above. The Moomin books, written by the Swedish-speaking Finnish writer, were an especial favourite of my sons when they were wee. They loved the adventures of Moomintroll (whom I think they identified with, being somewhat misfit themselves) and his family and his strange little friends as he lived and journeyed through the Moomin world. As we had a close Finnish friend, she was able to augment Jansson's stories with stories of her own adventures of following tracks and finding trolls, or of lighting candles in the forest to sing with the cold, or of the heavy-antlered reindeer that sledded on enormous feet through the snow.
The Moominland world puts me in mind of where we live here at Fat Hummingbird Farm. Especially now as we are embraced by the extremes and temper tantrums of winter. They live in two contrasting worlds, the Moomin family. On the one hand a luxuriant landscape of fields and pastures with brooks and flowers and leaf-heavy trees and grazing animals and rabbits and hedgehogs, and houses with tile stoves; and on the other, the unpredictable sea with its barren islands, archipelagos, caves, mussels, seas creatures and boats. It is in the tension between these worlds that the Moomin family settles down. It is in the tension between these worlds that we have settled down.
This winter that we are experiencing here on the Farm, with its capriciousness and its wayward and unpredictable behaviour is very like the winter that a wakeful, non-hibernating Moomintroll finds himself in in the book Moomin Midwinter. Not having experienced winter before he is entranced by both the beauty and the cruelty of the season. We have not experienced winter, actual winter, ourselves for over thirty years while living on the West (wet) Coast. We too are bewitched.
Moomintroll is captivated by the cold, white, wet powder he finds on the ground. So am I. I had forgotten how beautifully snowdrifts slump in soft folds with whetted edges. How snow falling in huge flakes at night looks much like the stars have fallen from the heavens. How a surrounding that you think you know well becomes a landscape so muted and transposed as to be an entirely different place - transformed by a season.
Moomintroll, in his illicit ventures into winterscape (he is, after all, meant to be hibernating!!) stumbles upon a new friend, Too-ticky, a wise spirit who sings mysterious songs. Too-ticky puts me in mind of the wind that shoves and shoulders against our windows and doors. At night, while we lay in bed, it sings loud, yowling songs outside our moon-struck window. I don't know what it is singing - I don't know the language - so these too are mysterious songs.
Moomintroll and his friends build a snow horse for the Lady of the Cold and mourn the passing of an absent-minded squirrel who gazed into the Lady's eyes and froze to death. I fear for the animals and birds in our winter of fits and frenzied tempers. The doves literally pile themselves up against our front door, seeking the shelter of the porch. The Juncos look particularly fat and are quick to correct that notion and insist that it is 'fluff' and not fat to guard against the cold. One wind was so powerful it blew all the birds away and it took them days to come back. Small-pawed animals mince across the snow quickly so tender pink pads don't become frost-bitten.
I am hoping that all these creatures are stout-hearted and courageous. That they will persevere and live to see the spring. In Jansson's book, when my boys were so sad when reading of the squirrel's demise, she has a comforting footnote:
"In case the reader feels like having a cry, please take a quick look at p. 126."
There on page 126 the squirrel has come back to life having suffered no ill affects and much wiser about gazing into eyes that shouldn't be gazed into. No matter how hard you love.
So . . . despite the frigid cold and the howling winds and the snow piled in drifts against the back door and the second mortgage taken out to keep the birds in bird feed, I love that we are in a place again that has winter. I think that spring will have so much more significance when winter finally lets her come. And I am hoping with all my heart for all the creatures that also call Fat Hummingbird Farm home . . . that there is a page 126.
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