Winter Blahs, Part 1

Every year as autumn passes into winter I start getting the blahs. I’m not usually depressed by the onset of winter, I just want to eat and sleep—and I would almost rather do the latter than the former. This condition begins to take hold right around the time the clocks go back to Standard Time but it becomes almost overwhelming after the 15th of December. By then we in the Northern Hemisphere have entered The Time of Darkness. Today the sun rose at 7:17 AM and set at 4:32 PM. We had just 9 hours and 15 minutes from sunrise to sunset. Tomorrow it will be more of the same. In fact, the sunrise and sunset times are the same. They won’t change much during the next two weeks. They might shift slightly in the next day or two to give use even less sunlight, but then the gap between sunrise and sunset will widen and we will have more light and less dark. This will be noticeable to the casual observer somewhere around New Year’s Day. I won’t begin to “feel” the change until sometime after Ground Hog Day in February.

Last Thursday I had to go to the doctor to get a nerve block on my lower spine. (My herniated disc was acting up again and didn’t respond to oral meds.) In preparation of the procedure, the nurses took my blood pressure and pulse. My BP before the shot was 129/66 and my pulse rate was between 49 and 52. And this was after I had had four cups of coffee for breakfast. I weigh in at around 215 and stand only 5' 10" so I'm not in the best of physical shape. (Although I have lost some 35 - 40 pounds from Jan 1, 2004.) From those numbers it is clear that my metabolism really slows down during the winter.

When I was teaching, I would gain 10 to 20 pounds every fall with the bulk (literally) of it coming between Thanksgiving and New Years. During the last two falls I haven’t put on that weight yet I’m eating just as frequently. My days are a little more active than they were while in the classroom. Between hunting and yard work I’ve been burning off the food. When the sun goes down, however, I’m just as tired.
Up north, where the days are even shorter, I don’t hit the sack early as I must tend the fire, my sole source of heat. If I don’t stay up until 10 or 11 PM then the fires will burn out before I get up—usually at 6 AM—and the house will be cold. Very cold. The morning temperatures can drop to single digits and sometimes even into negative numbers. But during the day there is snow removal from the driveway or the roofs to deal with. And there are snowshoes to don so I can go walking in the woods.

Here in New Jersey, there are indoor chores to do. Painting has occupied some of the days when I’m not afield looking to fill the freezer. When the sun goes down the TV offers up sports four or five times a week. (It would offer more if I were a hockey fan—I’m not.) After New Years and the Bowl games have passed and the pros are back to playing on Saturday and Sunday only, I’ll probably be in bed by 8-9 o’clock unless RU basketball is on the tube. I’ll still be out of bed by 6-6:30 most mornings.

By then, the days will be getting longer again and the added sunlight will trigger something inside me. My activity levels—physical and mental—will start to climb. I’ll start to pace around the house when the weather is bad waiting for the spring thaws. If I’m up north, I’ll be outside on my snowshoes if I need them walking the woods and waiting for the little bit of warmth that will make the nearly four feet of snow on the lawn disappear in a couple of days. Once the grass starts to show, I’ll be looking and listening for the woodcock and ruffed grouse, the robins and the sparrows.