The Winter City

By VITTI Cycling

March 2^nd, 2021

We have been living in a snow globe. You can pick it up and shake it and as the flakes settle at the bottom that's where we find ourselves, living our lives in the cold and the snow.

It is cold today, biting cold in the city, with clear bright winter skies and hardly any wind. There is still plenty of snow from the storms of last week. It’s piled on sidewalks and in basketball courts and still encases some cars that have yet to be shoveled out. The place feels like a ghost town, we have it all to ourselves. Streets normally teeming with traffic and people going about their days are now empty. It is a sign of the times we live in that everyone is home, it is also a Sunday in February and cold and early in the morning.

Riding through the urban canyons, the bright sun disappears sharply into shadow on the corners, creating a high relief from black to white. It feels like a film set, as if we rode around the corner we would see the timber holding up the building facades. The city sounds are gone, no trucks and taxis, nobody yelling, just the wind and the seagulls. It is surreal and lovely. It is a gift on this winter's day.

There is one man here in the empty downtown. We hadn't noticed him at first. He is walking with his hands in his pockets wearing a dirty yellow puffer jacket that has seen better days. He pays us no mind and stands in the sun looking up at the buildings and the clear sky and sings out one word in a loud clear brutally beautiful falsetto, “hallelujah”, as if this empty square in winter was a church. His voice echoes back off the deserted buildings, the downtown transformed temporarily into a place of unexpected beauty. He then goes through his range singing hallelujah again and again in a deeper and deeper voice until he settles at a tenor that seems to match him more. We stop and listen and are grateful for having been there to hear it and to experience this bit of reverence on this cold morning.

In winter we wish for summer’s heat and perfect conditions, we wish for big climbs and epic switchbacks. Winter strips the landscape to basics, a monochrome sky, snow and the ever present wind.

Winter has an austerity that is lovely in its own right, a subtle, raw beauty that we tend not to see. We simply endure the cold and snow until spring arrives.