After the January thaw comes the February freeze. Both are mythical events, really, or at least they are moveable events. The January thaw may take place in December or it may not take place at all, and the February freeze can put a stop to the quickenings of March. A late freeze will come this month in most years, though, and if you’re sick of winter this is the one that will break your heart.
The February freeze comes as you realize that the year at last is turning toward spring. You notice that the sun isn’t quite a winter sun anymore. It is warm these days, and it makes real shadows, which the sun of December never does. The sun gets into the trees, softening, limbering, awakening buds. At the ends of their gray branches the smallest twigs show softer colors: pink, yellow, green. The trees stretch their arms. The sun goes into the snow and begins to break it down. It gets into the frozen roads. They soften, and to a depth of an inch or so their surfaces turn to mud. The sun gets into you, too. It gets into your heart and tissues and into your thought. It prepares you for spring.
Comes the February freeze. The trees close up like traps. They freeze inside; their branches creak again. The snow that was softening goes as hard and tight as a concrete sidewalk; you can jump up and down on it. The roads that were going to mud freeze solid again, and taking a car on them is like trying to drive a train over the wrong-sized tracks.
It’s hard, when you had thought winter was ending, to have it all back again. Cheer up. You were right. The sun is warmer. The snow froze and the roads froze, but you didn’t freeze. The sun is still preparing you for spring, and soon it will be back at the snowbanks and the ice again. You were right to rejoice.
The Old Farmer’s Almanac 1983, page 53, author not given.
