With the holidays past, we have settled in for what many in this area call five months of the Pocono winter. That’s not far from the truth as leaves may not appear on the trees in the higher elevations until late May.

With daytime temperatures in the 20s and 30s and the emerging black of night coming at 5 p.m., we have little choice but to remain indoors, hunkered down like the hibernating black bear.

We eat more. We sit more. We watch more TV and when we have to face the outdoor elements, we bundle up in heavy jackets, gloves, and hoods or hats.

I sit here writing this column on a quiet Sunday morning while watching the chickadees and cardinals enjoying their breakfast at my birdfeeder. I wonder how such small creatures, covered in a slim layer of feathers can dance about the feeder pole in single digit weather with such energy and apparent joy. We might just take a lesson from their behavior. My feathered friends display courtesy, too. One bird will feed until another lands on the perch and the pattern of sharing the seed continues.

We are challenged this time of year to find ways to be joyful. I recall a friend of mine who died from cancer three years ago. Brad would drive his pickup truck to the edge of a nearby lake on a mid-winter’s late afternoon. He’d turn off the engine and gaze across at the frozen water, the barren trees, and the hovering gray clouds.

“The starkness and the emptiness are beautiful to me,” he said. “Nothing is moving; no life is anywhere to be seen. You hear absolutely nothing, but the sound of silence. You can feel your heart beat against your chest and you get swallowed up by the stillness.”

Enduring the disease that would end his life just a month later, Brad found the center of his soul at the side of the lake, a moment when he had faced the end of his mortality. He told me, “When everything around me is resting in peace, I can reflect upon my life and find acceptance that I too, will soon be resting in peace.”

We are offered different opportunities within the deep of winter. It can be a better time to read while we’re sheltered inside and get lost in stories of faraway worlds or island paradises. And when it snows enough to cause us to drive slower and walk in steps of deliberation, we can fully realize that winter is a blessing, nature’s sign to tell us to pause from the chaotic pace of life. This season has significant purpose, if only we heed its message.

Whenever I take that first step onto newly fallen snow, I get a sense of exhilaration, as if I was placing my foot where no one else has ever been before. Listening to the crunch as I walk makes me feel like a pioneer walking upon a never explored planet. The cold air burning my lungs and filling my eyes with tears makes me appreciate, just like Brad did, that I am awake inside a universe that is resting in peace until the frenetic energy of the upcoming spring will once again grow the land with new life.

Yesterday, the sun peaked through the clouds for a few minutes. You pay attention to the sun in winter more than you do in summer. It’s a welcomed beam of light through the darkened sky. I sit before the warming fire and I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Henry David Thoreau.

“What fire could ever equal the sunshine of a winter’s day?”

I look out my window and snowflakes the size of quarters have begun to fall, and another writer comes to mind. Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that we who live in the cold regions and snowbelts attain a greater degree of wisdom. “The hard soil of months of snow make the inhabitants of the northern temperature zone wiser and abler than the fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics,” he said.

I laugh and wonder if I would agree Emerson, but his point is clear to me. Winter internalizes us into self-examination while summer externalizes a desire to elevate our outdoor senses. The stark black and white scene painted by Mother Nature provides moments of self-reflection. We might imagine extraordinary ideas that would never come to mind under the numbing heat of the summer sun.

As a boy I would wait impatiently for winter to pass and for spring and summer to come. Now while I climb down the other side of the mountain of life, I wish for no seasons to hurry by. In winter, I have come to know that people I love are closer in mind and body. Longer conversations fill pleasant evenings within the walls of my home. Hugs are longer, too. Perhaps we linger longer because we want to hold onto the warmth from those who matter the most to us.

Emerson wrote that wherever snow falls ... wherever day and night meet in twilight ... wherever there is awe and love, there is beauty shed for you ... and should you walk the world over, you will not so much find any conditions of the universe that lift you higher in spirit.

Winter enlightens our wisdom, strengthens our spirit, and brings us closer together, a season to appreciate the privilege of life we’ve been given. While we enjoy its season now, winter also brings anticipation with it. With each turn of the calendar months, we get closer to the emergence of new life within the greening of the landscape before us.

Rich Strack can be reached at richiesadie11@gmail.com