Hibernation

My husband brought home a cold a few days ago, and we've both been at home sick for most of yesterday and all of today. I have to admit that, even though I have a stack of work waiting for me in my office, I'm glad. I think some of us must be more closely related to hedgehogs than biologists would suggest. My sister's two hedgehogs (they're rescues that can't be returned to the wild) go to sleep around this time of year and only wake up when the sky has sorted itself out and the sun is putting in a proper day's work.

This seems immensely clever of hedgehogs. And they eat snails, which shows good gardening skills and an admirable penchant for haute-cuisine. Although I don't eat snails, I agree with hedgehogs that winter should be a time, not for working and gadding about, but for curling up somewhere warm and quiet and thinking about things, and snoozing.

This might be why so many people dislike the daylight savings arrangement. It doesn't really save any daylight, it just makes it dark earlier. We should just accept that there is less daylight, and agree among each other that in the winter we are only expected to be awake and contactable for, say, four hours instead of eight.

'But why four hours?' the hedgehogs ask. 'Why not none?'
And there, you know, you can see the difference between people and hedgehogs, and the reason that we have operas and medicine and Nobel prize-winners and telescopes, while hedgehogs do not have any of these things and eat snails without even a bit of garlic butter.

Of course, apart from all these things, it's still worthwhile to get out of bed in the winter, providing it's decently light out. For one thing there is the way trees turn into patterns of intricate lacework. And there is the intriguing notion of everything being stored away till next year; bats and butterflies and crocus-bulbs, packed away like summer clothes. Andrew Wyeth described it perfectly:

“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.”