Start Of The Winter -

For me, the start of winter is an auditory event. It is the silence. The great insect chorus of summer—the cicadas’ electric whine, the crickets’ nightly fiddling—has died. The birds have fled to softer latitudes. What remains is a hollow quiet, broken only by the dry rattle of oak leaves clinging stubbornly to their branches or the distant, lonely sound of a train horn, carried unnaturally far in the dense, cold air.

The start of winter is not an ending. It is a reset. It is nature’s great pause button—a long, dark night of the soul that, if we are wise, we do not fight, but embrace. We light a candle against the gloom. We pull our coats tighter. We exhale, watching our breath turn to visible smoke in the air, and we whisper to the coming cold: I am ready. start of the winter

Meteorologists will tell you winter begins on the solstice, the shortest day of the year. But those who live close to the earth know better. Winter starts in the margins: in the first frost that turns the pumpkin vines to black lace, or in the moment the sunset shifts from a lingering gold to a hurried violet that vanishes by five o’clock. For me, the start of winter is an auditory event

It does not arrive with the blare of a trumpet or the crash of a wave. The start of winter is a thief in the night—subtle, apologetic, and utterly final. One morning, you step outside, and the air has changed. It is not merely cold; it is different . It has a texture, a crispness that feels less like atmosphere and more like a held breath. The birds have fled to softer latitudes