Winter’s Wakefulness and the Bee’s Slumber: Reflections on Cold and Survival

February 19, 2020

Winter evokes a complex array of feelings, beautifully captured in the words of writers and poets who remind us of the season’s unique character and the quiet wonders it holds.

Jarod Kintz, with a touch of humor, reflects the shifting human attitude toward the seasons as we age:

When I was young, I loved summer and hated winter. When I got older, I loved winter and hated summer. Now that I'm even older and wiser, I hate both summer and winter.

John Burroughs, the American naturalist, celebrates winter’s crispness and magic as an elemental force:

It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it.

Hal Borland offers timeless optimism:

No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.

And an anonymous observation on human nature highlights winter’s paradox:

Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer when they complained about the heat.

Winter is not just a human challenge but a natural test. Burroughs shares insight into the queen bee’s solitary winter survival, underscoring her quiet resilience:

The queen bee alone survives. You never see her playing the vagabond in the fall. At least I never have. She hunts out a retreat in the ground and passes the winter there, doubtless in a torpid state, as she stores no food against the inclement season.

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem The Humble Bee completes this meditation, contrasting human worries with the bee’s deep, mocking sleep through harsh winter blasts:

Seeing only what is fair,
Sipping only what is sweet,
Thou dost mock at fate and care,
Leave the chaff and take the wheat,
When the fierce northwestern blast
Cools sea and land so far and fast,
Thou already slumberest deep —
Woe and want thou canst out-sleep —
Want and woe which torture us,
Thy sleep makes ridiculous.

These reflections invite us to appreciate winter’s endurance and the quiet power found in nature’s smallest creatures.