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MY BELOVED WINTER; In Breckenridge

“Wrapped under layers of clothes we walk, the sky is swathed with clouds. There is certain privacy about winters which no other season gives you. And that is why winters are so close to heart.”

All my memories of childhood are somehow connected to the year’s most melancholy season. Childhood memories …. Ah! Let me ponder. If I had to reminisce taste, I think about fresh potato stuffed loaf with butter made on nippy November mornings. If I had to choose my favourite vacation, I recall my trip alone to mountains, in the frosty month of January. My favourite activity was playing in the snow with my brother and favourite recipe was baking sweet potatoes in brazier on foggy cold evenings. A bit of this and that but everything dates back to winters. Zoom forward to year 2014 and I was standing on the sleet of the most picturesque town of the world, Breckenridge, Colorado. The streets are carved out of those stories where there was a cardboard clock square and a jolly hatter selling his cardboard hats. From the arid land of Arabia, my current home to these snow-clad mountains of Colorado, a home outside home. A temperature difference of 60 degrees had completely overwhelmed me and even though it was a -17 outside I was happy like a kid in summers. 1 2This town is earnest and so nostalgic that it absolutely does not matter where you belong, be it Himalayas or the Sahara, you would be astonished alike without fail. Colorful cottages are enclosed by pines and hills, sidewalks are full of pine cones and streets are full of warm whiff of coffee. There is a faint sound of horses trotting down the street and even fainter cattle bell tinkling. Here you can stroll endlessly looking at the gorgeous neighborhood, peeping sheepishly inside the piquet fences and selecting your favorite lodge. And then change your favorite choice again in the next street. Or you can get totally lost in the whimsical vintage trunk shops along the way. Oh and what can you buy? Well …. Old street signs with someone else’s address where the postman had stopped coming to deliver mails long ago, a rustic basket full of time-worn vintage wine corks still holding that aubergine tint on its surface, old ceramic planters which used to house an indoor window kitchen garden for somebody, grandma’s sewing machine which hasn’t been oiled for decades together, typewriters which uses an ink no longer sold in market and probably has been declared fatal for human use. All this and many such gathering which are so pretty that you are compelled to buy them in an instinct. Once you reach home and unpack shopping bags, you wonder what in the world made you buy all that. The above shopping list was not randomly picked. I did it in all actuality. 3456After a perfect day spent walking, shopping, seeing a blizzard by the foothill, digging feet inside snow and having tea beside an orange sunset, I lay deep in my thoughts on way back home to Denver. There must be countless such small towns in the world which are in middle of nowhere and are absolutely stunning. What octave of mind must those people belong to who came to this part of the mountains and decided to stay there and build a neighbourhood around this quaint wilderness? The human of today would look for all amenities and preferences before calling it home. Look how far have we come. Let me actually say it with gusto again; look how far have we come! Living in much technology and less need for it, I usually wonder what if we stop inventing new things for our false requirements. It would be so much simpler.

Yes, people should just stop. You and I should halt. BE STILL, BREATHE DEEP AND KNOW. Let us get enveloped in layers of knitted woolens and sit beside a fire pit one and all. Talk to each other about feelings. Bake some sweet potatoes. Have them while they are still hot. Eat stowed roots and pickled vegetables. Burn our mitts while roasting and write some cards to friends and family. Fill a scrapbook. Decorate it with old buttons and lace from the old chemise. Register in that scrapbook, all that was done in spring, summer and fall. Make a log of all places visited and all the new people met along. Recycle old clothes. Enjoy the little of what winter has to offer because though it be but little, it is wonderful. 7


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