Living in upstate New York, I used to be smug about my winters, proud of them in a perverse way. Being here, enduring howling Canadian blizzards, I guess I felt strong, proud, superior to those people playing it safe in Georgia or North Caroline, Florida, bragging about their mild winters while I was proving my mettle. Getting through the winter up here was an accomplishment, something distinctive, I still have my frostbitten fingers to show for it.

I very much remember my first winter here, Rose and me, we had barely arrived with the sheep and one donkey when a monster storm roared down from Canada and slapped me upside the head, there was three feet of snow, drifts that blocked the door, shrieking winds, then right after, temperatures 30 degrees below zero. The panicked animals broke through the old fence and took off into the meadow and down into the woods. I was alone with a six month-old border collie who seemed to be begging me to let her enter the fray, do something about it. So I did, I released Rose and she tore off into the storm, gathered all of the animals into a culvert and marched them back into the pasture, looking at me contemptuously. My new life had begun.

Tonight, we await yet another in the endless line of big storms and bitter cold weather that has characterized this winter. But my perspective is different. Philadelphia of all places had three times as much snow as we have, it is colder in northern Alabama than it is here many nights, the photos I see from the Midwest make my little town look like Orlando and people in Georgia are trapped in their homes and offices without power for days.

How curious that this template has shifted so dramatically in such a short time, and , and our winter has been pretty ugly, but no as ugly as that of many others. I wonder what kind of people follow the lead of the Weather Channel and actually call the new storm “Pax,” as they like to do, they personalize storms the way some people personalize animals. I can’t imagine calling this storm “Pax,” how strained and presumptuous.

I think that the extreme weather this winter has done something interesting though, I think it has bound all of us in a new way. We are all in winter, not just some of us, we are all tested by the snow and the ice and the cold, we are all, for perhaps the first time, listening to the messages of winter,  the messages of the earth, and pondering them in our own way. For me, it is a powerful reminder that the earth is wounded, calling upon us to help her heal.

My winters are not so special any longer, they are our winters, we all know them now, feel them,  from Texas to Mississippi to Maine, we are all counting the days until they are over. My frostbitten fingers throb every day, reminding me of the dangers of hubris and narcissism. This, in a way, is a life changing circumstance, this common knowledge will change all of us, will bind all of us together in a new and different way. Tomorrow, we may get seven or 10 inches her, wind and snow and ice, things are much worse in Northern New Jersey, Philadelphia, even Atlanta.

I can’t really write about winters as I wrote about my blizzard and Rose, your stories are better than mine.  I am her with a new dog watching my back, digging the sheep out of the snow, he is tough like Rose, undeterred by weather.

Still, in our polarized culture – even the weather itself has become politicized – anything that connects us in this way – in life, not cable news – reminds me of our real connection, our common humanity, of what it means to be a human being caught in the net of life, in its drama and glory. I’ll find some new dramas to write about, there are plenty on a farm with animals. Now I can share this story with you and we all know what the other is speaking of and feeling.

Stay warm, stay dry, let’s trade stories on the other side.