When Winter Breaks in Alice Springs

The daylight dies earlier and the cold bites. Slowly, the Red Centre enters winter.

At night, I use blankets - no heater, yet. But the morning temperature is in single digits and the wind is icy. It cuts through my warm jacket and stings against my body.

Despite the chill, this is my favourite time of year. 

Without the prohibitive heat, the outdoors is open to whoever might want to explore. The sunshine is gentle and by ten in the morning, the warmth of the day has descended, without the cloying oppression of summer. I want to be outside, and I look through windows and doors all day, waiting for the evening when I can walk around the dry Todd River or into the hills on the outskirts of town just before sunset.

Although this changing of the seasons happens every year, there is always, by the end of summer, desperate despair that winter might elude us this time. It is so hot and so uncomfortable that summer feels endless as if it might continue indefinitely, like the red soil that reaches the horizon. Winter seems like a dream. It is hard to imagine anything else.

This is a trick that life plays on us many times. We think that something will go on forever, despite the evidence to the contrary. We forget about all the times seasons changed in the past, and we give up our hope, and we fall in a heap or settle.

Just like the change that worked into our lives in the past, so too will these long days come to their end. Everything passes, and everything moves on to something new, no matter how long it takes. In the middle of the stifling heat of summer, we need to treasure the days when we can still swim in ice-cold waterholes and enjoy the temperate climate of the nighttime before that snap of cold demands thick jumpers and gloves. Winter brings icicles on outside taps and a searing wind that sweeps across Central Australia unimpeded. Cars don’t start in the morning, and the temperature drops to the minuses at night.

And then, of course, it feels like winter will be a permanent state. We get tired of heating houses and battling the chill, and we long for summer so that we can dip our toes into the water at Ormiston Gorge or Ellery Creek without getting frostbite. We long to swim, and the winter chills in throats and noses that morph into days off work become tiresome.

The jewels of winter – the hot coals of a campfire, the distant beauty of the silver-flecked night sky, the fresh mornings, and the ability to hike the red trails in the West Macdonnell ranges outside of Alice Springs – seem to go on for too long and we forget their beauty. Perhaps watching the seasons is a good thing; we can draw comfort from the inevitability of their cycle, knowing that one will follow the other, and when the year closes, we are richer for having experienced both.

 

    Winter Sunset, Alice Springs.