It has been so cold over the past few weeks that the birds haven’t been coming to our feeders. Like most Februarys, I find myself staring out of the window at the cold landscape feeling mildly depressed that winter seems never ending.

At this time of year, I seem to spend too much time standing at the window and looking out at the monochromatic bleakness. And my mind goes back fifty years …

…. to our first year in Canada when I took the above photograph in the frozen Ontario countryside. But then, there’s the realization that we felt differently about winter in those days.

Ice hockey on Lake Ontario

It didn’t take long for the children to learn to skate.  Here’s our son, Adrian, on the frozen lake in front of Kingston’s city hall.

We embraced winters back in the seventies, and even wrote some poetry:

But, now in one’s mid-eighties, standing by the window, looking out at the falling snow, one’s mind goes back to warmer winter’s past.

On the cloudless days of February in Southern Arizona, we hiked the foothills of the Santa Catalina mountains not far from home where the shimmering golden Cottonwood trees were the only sign of winter.

And, before that, during our time in Jamaica, February was when the tourists came to escape winter.

Port Antonio, North Coast, Jamaica

And we would find a secluded place to escape the tourists and swim in the warm waters of the Caribbean.

Alligator Pond, South Coast, Jamaica

And we would talk about when we swam in the Indian ocean and of our native South Africa when February meant long summer days on the most beautiful beaches anywhere.

Robberg Peninsula, Garden Route, South Africa

And, because it was still summer in February when we returned for a vacation twenty years ago, we hiked at 3000 meters in the Drakensberg Mountains.

Sani Pass, Drakensberg, South Africa

But these are just memories that, if anything, make today’s North American winters seem even colder. And, looking out the window, the snow is still falling, and I am reminded of my Irish grandfather and of the final paragraph of James Joyce’s short story, The Dead.

Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

And suddenly I notice a bird, a junco, perched on the feeder pole. Life goes on.