As a long, hot summer is finally waning we’re still seeing higher than average temperatures. Small talk often turns to the weather and how we’re all eager for fall and cooler weather to really get here. But before the record-setting summer, we had a spectacularly cold and snowy winter. Somehow as we wish for cool days, we seem to forget that winter is right around the corner and with it snow, ice, impassable roads, power outages, dark evenings and all the inconveniences winter so often brings. We were without power for two days just before Christmas and it was COLD. A darkened Christmas tree in a house with frost inside the windows is not a cheery thing.
And yet, we are eager for cool mornings, the changing of the leaves, the first frost. We celebrate sweaters and fuzzy socks and scarves. We make soups and stews and hearty dishes that are so good with a glass of red wine. Soon enough, we’ll be complaining about the snow and wishing for spring, but isn’t the wishing a vote of confidence in the future? Isn’t the looking forward to a new season–even as relief from the old–a special kind of optimism? This time . . .
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest.
-Alexander Pope, Essay on Man
Meet Sarah
