Day 15: December 21, 1971 - My first winter begins

O Radiant Dawn

What sorcery
within a night
has made a city street
into a fairy glade?

Winter begins! The name "winter" comes from a Germanic term meaning "time of water" and refers to the seasonal precipitation. The winter solstice—the moment when the sun's apparent path is farthest south from the Equator—is used to officially mark winter's beginning. In the Northern Hemisphere, winter begins on the "shortest day" of the year, December 21 or 22, and lasts until March 20 or 22, the beginning of spring, marked by the vernal equinox, when day and night are equal in length. In the United States, this winter's solstice occurs on December 21 at 2:21 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, 7:21 P.M. Greenwich Mean Time. Those of us in the Southern Hemisphere, today celebrate the beginning of the summer season.

In his extended meditation on the winter landscape, "A Winter Walk," Henry David Thoreau reflects:

Now commences the long winter evening around the farmer's hearth, when the thoughts of the indwellers travel far abroad, and men are by nature and necessity charitable and liberal to all creatures. Now is the happy resistance to cold, when the farmer reaps his reward, and thinks of his preparedness for winter…

Henry David Thoreau, "A Winter Walk,"Excursions, p.134.
The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920