A man in his elements

There is something primal about preparing for winter. Winter makes you work at life.

TWAM-20170304 EMBARGO FOR TWAM 4 March 2017NO REUSE WITHOUT PERMISSION TWAM dinkus Bernard Salt pic : Nick Cubbin

I like winter. I like rugging up and going out into the elements. I like the chilled air biting at my face and drops of rain strafing my hair. I like going about my business and seeing people, couples, families all rugged up against the cold and hurrying here, scurrying there.

Winter makes you work at life. There is no sauntering about; no lolling in an unhurried moment. There’s an urgency in getting from point A to point B. Wild winter weather is the best: the rainier, the windier, the better.

For those of us with an open fire at home, there is something primal about preparing for winter; the coming of the cold forces you to think ahead by collecting, chopping and stacking wood. This is surely one of humanity’s most ennobling of acts, where in times past a man could use his brawn to show commitment to, and love for, his family by provisioning against the coming chill. And even though there are fewer open fires today, and women are now equally capable of getting wood, I think this most basic of instincts lingers still for some men.

Only winter offers the intense pleasure of coming in from the cold and sidling up to a heater, or better still an open fire, and edging as close as you dare. I don’t know why but after warming frozen hands, some kind of survivalist thinking kicks in and the body turns to position the bottom closest to the heat source. Is it because this arrangement offers warmth along the shortest possible route to the vital organs?

The winter months must be managed in everyday life. More thought goes into wardrobe selection with jackets, coats and scarves, whereas high summer offers little beyond shorts, T-shirts and thongs. Discussing the possibility of rain, or the chilliness of the morning, brings people together; it’s the one topic upon which strangers can converse without obligation to say anything else.

Is there no sweeter sound in life than the splash of rain on a tin roof while you are warm and cosy inside? Better still, how about being woken in the middle of the night by a flash of lightning, a crash of thunder and a downpour of rain that unleashes upon the earth?

In a downpour, I even get excited knowing that my house’s gutters are clean, and that excess water is being whisked away via efficient drainage. I have been known to get an umbrella and check drains during a downpour. Oh, the thrill of seeing everything working as it should. The deep sense of satisfaction in clearing a drain of leaf debris by hand and then seeing built-up water flow on in search of a bigger drain someplace else. Begone, built-up water, for ye shall not despoil my gutters. Do you think I missed my calling as a plumber?

I once spent Christmas in Vienna, where I thought I could indulge my passion for all things wintery and Christmassy. For the first few days I was utterly captivated by the graceful snowdrifts wafting across the cathedral and plaza. But then came the reality of street-dirty snow – sludge, really – and of a kind of cold that came from a place beyond the Australian ken. It was at that moment I realised my winter love is constrained to a narrow band of latitude, in fact to my beloved Melbourne with its wild and wintry weather.

A Melbourne winter offers neither snow nor sludge nor cyclonic downpour, but rather a kind of refined chill that merely keeps everyone focused on the simple, but decidedly communal, act of keeping warm.