On A Snowy Evening

Read Charlotte Canelli's column in the Norwood Bulletin and Transcript this week.

Excerpt:

Waking up to drifting snow against our windowpanes last Sunday I was reminded again of why I love living in New England. The romance of snowy woods and twinkling lights through the shrouded dawn cause me to catch my breath every time. The tradition of the seasons, the poetry of life and the rhythms of New England are part of my soul.
Although I was born in Massachusetts I moved away in 1959 and grew up in the San Francisco East Bay in Northern California. There we had a four-hour car ride to the Sierra Nevada mountain range with its constant wintery snowfalls. It’s not quite the same, however, when your own home’s front walk and backyard aren’t part of the seasonal fairytale.

Waking up to drifting snow against our windowpanes last Sunday I was reminded again of why I love living in New England. The romance of snowy woods and twinkling lights through the shrouded dawn cause me to catch my breath every time. The tradition of the seasons, the poetry of life and the rhythms of New England are part of my soul.

Although I was born in Massachusetts I moved away in 1959 and grew up in the San Francisco East Bay in Northern California. There we had a four-hour car ride to the Sierra Nevada mountain range with its constant wintery snowfalls. It’s not quite the same, however, when your own home’s front walk and backyard aren’t part of the seasonal fairytale.

And so this morning, happily cozied up to a fire inside my home and writing my seasonal greeting cards, I found myself singing a familiar New England song. The words to the well-known poem “Over the River and Through the Woods” were written by Medford-born Lydia Maria Child. Her poem was included in an anthology titled “Flowers for Children” in 1844.

The children’s departments in the Minuteman Library Network have more than a half-dozen versions of Child’s illustrated verse in over a dozen copies, all titled “Over the River and Through the Woods.” Lydia Maria Child and her husband, David, lived on a farm not far from Norwood in Wayland. It isn’t difficult to imagine the woods she wrote about which are duplicated in every community for miles around.

Since the 19th Century, that poem and song have been closely associated with Thanksgiving Day and the festivity of families gathering for the holiday. In fact, the poem was originally titled “A Boy’s Thanksgiving Day.” This Thanksgiving Day, 2009, however, was mild and balmy and no inspiration for an over-the-river-and-through-the woods revelry.

Maria Child (the author hated her first name, Lydia) became one of the first American women who actually earned enough from her writing to live on. “The American Frugal Housewife” and “The Mother’s Book” were some of her popular books – well before Martha Stewart captivated an audience.

Child also wrote of pioneering Americans long several decades before Laura Ingalls Wilder and her Little House series. It may surprise us, then, that Child went on to become a passionate abolitionist and activist. It’s little wonder that American audiences preferred her poems and writings dealing with domestic bliss and many turned away from her political writings. Who can resist “Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done? Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!” over more serious writing?

It also might be only when you drive through a perfect New England countryside that you imagine Robert Frost musing over the same spot of woods that you have occasioned upon. While Frost won his first of four Pulitzer prizes for his 1927 book of poems “New Hampshire,” it is “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” that we have all learned by heart. It might also be the one poem of Frost that is taught and anthologized more than any other.

One of the most beautiful children’s books of illustrated poetry is Susan Jeffers account of Frost’s poem. Originally published in 1978 it was republished in 2001. Children find the same magic in Frost’s words, “whose woods these are I think I know.”

Interestingly, the poem is only sixteen lines. Frost’s economy resonates with so many of us who have witnessed just such a winter wonder that pulls us in so many directions. “The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep.” Frost’s narrator shakes off his romantic contemplation and faces the reality of his long journey.

The journeys are always there; stopping to take in the quiet and beauty around us in our New England countryside may be what is needed. Many of us would be better off in the hustle and bustle of this holiday season life to take another kind of advice from Frost’s work: stopping for a moment to witness the magic of our New England countryside.

Visit our website, www.norwoodlibrary.org or call 781-769-0200. We wish you a happy, healthy and safe winter. The library is open seven days a week throughout the winter and spring. Check out weather alert blog on the website for any snow closings.