Deep Winter

Welcome to Stories from the Village of Nothing Much. Like easy listening, but for fiction. I'm Katherine Nicolai. I write and read all the stories you'll hear on the Village of Nothing Much. Audio engineering and sound design by Bob Wittersheim. In our show notes, you'll find links to our ad-free premium version, our other shows, and our merch and partner products. Hello, hello, my friends. Thank you for being here with me. I hope this new year is being kind to you so far. If you need to take a little break in the cozy world of nothing much, well, I have three lovely wintry stories for you today. The idea here, if this is your first time listening, is fiction based more around atmospherics and emotion and sensory elements and not so much around plot. The characters don't have names. Maybe they are you. The place is where you imagine it. The extra details are for you to dream up. Think of this as a grown-up version of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, and we call it the Village of Nothing Much, and you are very welcome here. So unclench your jaw, let your shoulders drop down from your ears, and soften the spot between your eyebrows. In fact, let's take a deep breath in through the nose and sigh from the mouth. Nice. One more. Inhale and exhale. Good. Window weather. This first week of January was just bitter cold. The snow lay thick on the ground, and long icicles hung from the eaves. I'd had to go out, a few errands that just couldn't be put off any longer. And now, as I wound my way back home, I was so glad to know I wouldn't have to leave again. The afternoon light was dim We were still a few hours from sunset but it looked like it might happen at any minute A lot of houses were still strung with holiday lights and the gleam of them in the overcast atmosphere felt like a beacon guiding me home It was always an odd, in-between feeling at this time of year wanting a fresh start but needing the comfort and coziness left over from the holidays to get through it. I found it best to take in steps. One weekend I'd take down the tree. The next put away the Christmas village. The lights I'd leave up until a very nice weekend rolled around say in March when it was a joy to be outside for a few hours and I'd let myself appreciate the process of untangling the strands and boxing them up. I drove past the skating rink in downtown and saw that not a single soul was out on it today. It was just brutally cold, and there was no amount of bundling that could make it fun to play outside. I turned past the park, where kids weren't making snowmen, and wound through the neighborhood to my house. All along my street, smoke rose from chimneys, and I was glad to see so many of us settled in for the day. As I turned into my driveway and waited for the garage door to lift, snow began to fall. Perfect timing. It felt like it had held off just for me. I drove into my garage and pushed the button, letting it close behind me. Does anyone else do this? Wait for the garage to close before you get out of the car? It feels like I'm stepping into a decompression chamber, a layer of safety between me and the whole world. It was silly, a metaphor more than anything else, but whenever I did it, I found I sighed deeply in the car. I began to unpack the groceries from the trunk, setting the bags at the top of the few steps from the mudroom into the kitchen, then slowly pulled off my boots and coat, hung up my scarf and stuffed my gloves into the sleeve of my coat. Another sigh. In the kitchen, I emptied the grocery sacks. I loved to fill my kitchen with citrus at this time of year, and topped up a bowl on the counter with sumo oranges, ruby red grapefruits, and Meyer lemons. The sharp, sweet scents clung to my fingers, and I decided to start a simmer pot on the stove to add their peels to. Most days in the winter, I kept a pot simmering to soften the air. I'd add vanilla or cardamom pods to it, but one of my favorite additions was just orange and lemon rinds. When they simmered, they released a soft floral scent, sweet and homey. As I stood at the sink filling a pot, I looked out into the yard and saw the snow was coming down thickly now. This was what my mother called window weather, as in excellent weather to a joy from inside your cozy house, to be watched from the window. I set the pot on the stove and lit the burner and went back to sorting the groceries. I had a big sack of potatoes for the shepherd's pie I meant to make later, carrots and peas, onions and brown lentils. I'd also bought a big cabbage to roast in the oven, boxes of crackers, containers of olives, canned chickpeas and beans, hearty stick-to-your-ribbed stuff that would see me through these frigid days. There were oats for porridge, arborio and jasmine rice, ramen and pastina and packages of broth. I'd bought coffee beans and a few boxes of tea, cinnamon sticks, of which I'd add a few to the simmer pot, and a packet of lemon drop candies. From the bakery, I had a loaf of sandwich bread, a thick slice of focaccia, a half dozen oatmeal cookies, and an almond croissant for breakfast tomorrow. I'd also stopped at the bookshop before it closed for their annual vacation and picked up the new book for my book club It was a thriller that I'd heard from more than one friend was impossible to put down and easy to read all in one day I heard a tinkling bell, and then another and saw two of my three cats wandering into the kitchen to check out the purchases There was a stack of canned food for them a bag of their kibble and a fresh scratching post they could fight over. I set it on the floor in the corner of the dining room and let them dig in. I loved dogs too, very much, but had to admit that in these frigid days, I was glad none of us needed to be walked or let outside. They were brothers, my cats, all three of them, and had showed up at the shelter when they were just kittens. All they'd had were each other. And though it was a big step to go from zero cats to three, I'd decided I could handle it. They hadn't even had names back then. And when they first came home, stepped out of their carrier, and started to explore, I found them drawn to the bowl of stones on my entryway table. I was a hobbyist beachcomber in the summertime, and had found lots of pretty rocks, even had a tumbler to polish them up. The brothers had nosed through my collection, and so I had named them Dolomite, Feldspar, and Steve. Listen, it makes sense if you know them. Steve meowed from the post, clearly enjoying his new piece of furniture, and I smiled at them as I finished putting everything away. Steam was rising from the pot on the stove, and I could smell the cinnamon I'd dropped in. I turned on the light over the range and turned off the overhead and sighed again. My home was in order. We were stocked up and ready to stay put for a bit. On the stairs as I headed up to change out of my jeans and sweater and into my pajamas it was nearly three o after all I passed Dolomite He was my shy boy, and I stopped to give him a few pets. He had heard his brothers playing downstairs and had finally decided to creep down and join the fun. He slunk past me, and I kept climbing. From my bedroom window, I looked up and down the street. seeing lit windows, the flicker of fires going. In another few weeks, this cold spell would move on. The sun would last a bit longer each day. But for now, we'd enjoy the world inside and watch the snow fall from our windows. Let's take a deep breath together. In through the nose. And out through the mouth. It feels good to breathe deeply. and the air we breathe, especially at night, matters more than we might think. While we sleep, our bodies are hard at work, restoring, repairing, and recharging. But that work can be quietly disrupted by what's floating in the air, things like dust, pollen, and other allergens. I didn't used to think much about indoor air quality, but once I did, I realized, if we care about what we eat and drink, why not care just as much about what we breathe? That's why I sleep with a Jasper air scrubber in my room. It has no annoying lights and doubles as a gentle white noise machine that's become essential to my bedtime rhythm. But more than anything, it's turned my bedroom into a sleep sanctuary, a space where the air helps me sleep deeply and peacefully. I can't recommend Jasper enough. You can learn more at jasper.co. And if you use the code sleep, you'll get $300 off. That's j-a-s-p-r dot c-o. Use code sleep for $300 off. Snowstorm at Weathervane Farm. They had been predicting it for days. A snowstorm like we hadn't seen in years. And to be honest, I've heard that before. Probably more than once per winter. So at the beginning of the week, when all this snow was much more hypothetical, yes, we'd made sure the barns were stocked with extra hay and that the plow was on the truck, but we hadn't made any other plans. We just watched the forecasts and waited. But each day, they sounded more sure. And their predictions had grown along with their confidence. Now we weren't looking at just five inches of snow, or even eight. Now they seemed pretty sure that by the time Old Man Winter was finished with us, we'd have two feet of fresh flakes to contend with. Today, when the latest prediction had played over the radio, I'd been standing in the kitchen of the farmhouse, the scent of breakfast, toast and coffee, still rich in the air, and I smiled and rubbed my hands together in excitement. Looking out from the kitchen window, I could see the calm before the storm. Our paddocks and yard were clear, trampled grasses still visible, and our rescue animals were out playing and feeding. And I like at least one solid snowstorm each year. I don't know, I find them fun, especially if we didn't have anywhere to go, which we didn't, and we had plenty of supplies, we did. I loved watching the landscape change hour after hour, the goats becoming indignant, and then about a half hour later, playing wildly in the snow. I liked tucking everyone into their stalls and pens with straw and treats and blankets and retreating back to the house for cocoa and cookies. So now that it seemed like a sure thing, that this snow was coming, and coming soon, we set about making a list of things to get done before it got too late. Once we had our marching orders, we lay around our coats and hats, stepped into our rubber boots. My first stop was the pond on the far edge of the property, where the ducks and geese were out for their daily splash. I wondered if it would be frozen over by the end of the storm. and guessed it probably would. I'd swiped a package of blueberries from the fridge, as they were one of our feathered friends' favorite treats, and I met them at the water's edge, and tossed a handful of berries among their waddling bodies. It's gonna snow, y'all, I called through my muffler. I turned toward the barn and tossed a few more over my shoulder, and they came toddling after me. Just then, the first flake started to fall, and from our spot on the edge of the farm we could see it dropping like fairy dust over the fields and outbuildings. I smiled as we trudged down the path. When the ducks and geese were all inside their pen with fresh water and the last of the berries, I went to settle the donkeys. Our youngest, a donkey named George, who had been born in the spring, was excitedly chasing through the yard with our husky Frigo. They had become good friends over the summer, and often napped together in the donkey enclosure. I wondered if I'd have a hard time getting Frigo to come into the house with me once the chores were done today. He loved the snow and cold, and I decided if he wanted to snuggle with George and Muriel and the other donkeys, it would be fine. Their part of the barn was well insulated, and a few years back, while we were renovating, pulling out rotten floorboards, We'd installed underfloor heating, which the animals loved. It was never toasty in there, but it was never frigid either. And one of the promises we made to the animals we gave sanctuary to was that their best days lay ahead of them. But they would feel cared for, and if we could manage it, even a bit pampered. And heated floors definitely helped. I called for George and Frigo. The snow was thick now, and I couldn't see much past the edge of the corral. The ponies who'd been out with them had had enough and came clippity-clopping through the open barn doors. I brushed the snow out of their hair and settled them in their pen. I called again for George and Frigo, and in the distance heard the goats being called in from their yard. We'd decided to divide and conquer in our chores, and I was a bit glad I'd not ended up with the goats on my list. They were stubborn and silly, and while I loved them very much, I knew getting them to all go in the same direction was a bit like herding cats. Speaking of cats, I looked down the row of pens, past the pigs who were snoring in their straw, and the llamas munching their grasses, to see if the barn cats had shown up to snuggle in. They, unlike the goats and George and Frigo, did not need to be convinced to come in out of the weather. I found them stretched out on the elevated walkway we'd built for them over the summer. They liked to make their rounds around the barn and look down on the other animals. It's a cat thing. I filled their water and food bowls and added extra blankets on the beds balanced up on their shelf. Finally, I'd had it, waiting on my silly donkey and dog, and tromped out into the snow to hustle them inside. When I stepped out, it seemed a full two or three inches had already fallen. The whole landscape was draped in white It was a beautiful sight George was trotting through it and called out to me with a long hee his little whipped tail wagging behind him He nudged me for kisses and cuddles and I stood there with him, his long head in my arms, murmuring to him about the fun he could have tomorrow when there would be even more powder to prance through. Frigo was rolling in the snow, His fuzzy fur inundated with it, and I couldn't help but laugh. These kids, they made me so happy. From the other barn, I could just hear the lowing of the cows and the bleeding of the goats who had finally been tucked in. I leaned into George's shoulder and kissed his soft cheek. Come on, Georgie, nap time. He and a well-chilled Frigo followed me in, and as they settled into the straw with the other donkeys, there was a chorus that began and resounded through the barn. Each animal called out to hear the others. Was everyone inside? They seemed to be asking. I looked and listened and assured myself as well as them. Yes, everyone was accounted for. Everyone had bedding and food and water, favorite stuffies and balls to play with. As I pulled the heavy barn door closed behind me and turned back to the farmhouse, ready for cocoa and a spot by the fire, I hummed under my breath, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. If you're hearing this, it means you've already made sleep a priority. And that's something worth applauding. You've carved out this quiet moment to wind down. and I have something that fits beautifully into that routine. It's called Moonbird. It's a small screen-free device that gently expands and contracts in your hand, guiding your breath with a calming rhythm. You don't have to count or focus, just hold it and breathe. I got mine first and I'm using it right now. I use it whenever I record this podcast. It helps me stay calm and centered as I read to you. And after seeing how much it helped me, my wife wanted one for herself and now she loves it too. There's no screen to distract you, but if you like data, there's an optional app that tracks your heart rate and HRV. A recent study found that people fell asleep 28% faster and had 37% better sleep quality using Moonbird daily. If you're ready to take your bedtime ritual even further, you can get 15% off at moonbird.life slash nothingmuchhappens. We'll have that in our show notes, moonbird.life slash nothingmuchhappens. The innkeeper's blanket. It had started as a scarf. I hadn't picked up a crochet hook in ages. A decade, maybe. But while I was cleaning out a closet on the second floor, I'd found a basket full of yarn and hooks in several sizes. And I'd sat right down on the stairs and pulled a length of fiber from one of the skeins and wondered if my hands still knew how to do this. Sure enough, as I tied off a loop and poked a hook through it, like riding a bike, I quickly made a long chain of simple stitches. And as I did, I even said aloud, Yarn over. That, I remembered, was what my mother had said when she taught me this first step in the process when I was a little girl. I turned the chain around and stitched over it, marveling at how my fingers remembered the movements of tucking the hook through a loop, wrapping the yarn over and pulling it back through. When I got to the end of the row and went to turn it again, I remembered my mother counting out three chain stitches before turning so that the design didn't slope at the edges, and I made them myself, counting one, two, three. I'd sat there in the dim winter light and held the row of stitches out at arm's length to admire it. I knew right then I'd found a project for the winter months. I'd tucked my wobbly first attempt back into the basket and gone back to my chore at the closet that day. I had a feeling that crocheting would not be best enjoyed in the chilly hallway sitting on a stair, but in front of the fire in the library after my work was done. And I always had a good deal of work to do at the inn in the off-season. When guests were coming and going, as they did from late spring to early fall, we could keep up with the daily room cleaning, the cooking and serving, but anything beyond that had to wait. And it waited for me and for the winter. I'd done lots already, and I didn't mind being alone in the big house. I played music to keep me company and worked from room to room, deep cleaning, steaming the curtains, polishing the wooden banister from the front hall all the way up to the attic. Friends visited now and then. We'd have tea parties in the giant ballroom on the third floor. Once a week I went to book club at the shop in downtown. I cooked pots of soup down in the kitchen and ate pickles from our pantry that chef had put up in large batches in the summer. And I liked cleaning out the cupboards and closets most of all. I'd been the innkeeper here for many years already, but I knew that this house still had secrets she kept from me. So each winter, I'd pick a few cubbies and closets and clean them out to their back walls. And I always found some interesting things. Before I'd come upon the basket of yarn, I'd found a stack of old board games. the seams of their boxes splitting apart, even under a layer of yellowing tape that was likely already 40 years old. The best part had been opening them up, taking in their dusty, warm scent, and finding scorecards in faded pencil, showing who had won a hard-fought game of cribbage long before I was a twinkle in the old house's eye. In a box with candlesticks, and for some reason very old tulip bulbs, were a stack of menus, some even handwritten from fancy dinners held here in the inn's earliest years. I'd sent pictures of them to Chef, who was cooking in a ski resort for the winter. They'd called me, and we'd spent a silly half hour going through each appetizer, entree, and dessert, wondering if our modern diners would be interested in some of these very vintage flavors. Maybe, we'd said, we could find a few choice picks and add them to our rotation in the spring. After days like that, I'd clean up and I'd reach for my crochet basket and stretch out on the sofa in the library and work away at it for a while. That's how the scarf had turned into a blanket. I'd bought some new yarn at the craft shop and a bendier hook that felt better in my hands. The owner had taken some time to kindly show me a few other stitches and soon I was well on my way The nice thing about a scarf or even a blanket is that you don really need a pattern You just make it So I started stitching a long line and wrapped it around my neck now and then until it was as long as I felt it should be, then turned it and worked my way back across the chain, and so on and so on. At some point I realized that I should probably stop. It was as wide as it needed to be to keep someone's neck and chin warm, but I didn't want to stop. I was having a good time, so I kept stitching and turning, counting one, two, three, and my scarf was soon halfway to being a good-sized blanket. I stretched it out over my legs, and it kept me warm while I worked. The evenings passed, and I kept stitching. The snow melted and came again, coating the gardens with white. The lake froze over completely, and the geese gathered and flew off one day, honking their goodbyes. I switched from soups to casseroles in a simmered pot with lemon peels. I switched from soups to casseroles and simmered a pot with lemon peels and rosemary on the stove. And one evening, my blanket was finally done. Though I'd been careful with my stitches, in the end it came out a bit wonky. Not so you'd notice when you were cuddled up under it. But when I laid it out on my bed, it had a definite hourglass shape I hadn't intended. It felt a bit like the year, actually. Ebbing and flowing, full to thin and back again. And I decided that I liked the organic nature of it. It was handmade, and it showed. Well, that settles it, I said to myself. This one is for me. I'd keep it as proof that even when things are imperfect, they can still be warm and enjoyable. Thank you. As I reread these stories today, we are in a very cold week in Michigan, one in which we are also not leaving the house unless absolutely necessary. And these seem particularly charming to me as I sit under two blankets in my writing room, looking down at the Rouge River. The idea of window weather comes from an Icelandic term that, while I'd never heard before, immediately understood. I love a cold, snowy day, but it's best enjoyed from inside a warm house. Do you do that decompression chamber thing in your garage? I do. Or I did when my car still fit into my garage. It doesn't anymore. But I remember that feeling of being like too exposed to the world and then rolling into the darkness of the garage and closing it before opening my car door. Big sigh. The window weather episode features a lot of food. And I think of this as almost a genre of stories that I write. Occasionally, I write food-heavy episodes. And for a lot of listeners, that pushes a button that feels very cozy and enjoyable, and for some others, it can be a trigger. It's been a while since I've talked about this, but as someone who lived with eating disorders for double decades, I want to just hold some space and consideration for those of you who might feel uncomfortable there. Often people write comments about this, saying that they can't fall asleep to food-heavy stories because they get hungry and they're trying not to eat before bed. So, just let me be a voice that says this, My dear, if you are hungry, please eat. There is a solution there. Eat. As much as you need to, as often as you need to, no matter what you ate yesterday. I policed this in my own life until I was a few inches from destruction, and it squeezed a lot of joy from my life. made me focus on things that don't matter. It stole my attention and energy and left me with a lot of healing to do. On the other side of it though, I want to say that recovery is possible and beautiful. I'm six years into recovery and have never felt better in my body and about myself. So no, I won't stop writing about food. If the trigger feels too difficult to manage on your own, Please get some help. I wrote about a thriller book from a book club that the narrator can't put down, and I bet I was thinking about the book My Murder by Katie Williams. Oh my gosh. If you need one that you just barely come up for air with, go get it right now. I know I said in the intro that my characters don't have names, but clearly I only meant the humans. Naming animals is one of the great joys of my writing, and I will never give it up. Where did Feldspar, Dolomite, and Steve come from? They just emerged fully formed one day, and I realize I need to write more about them. I'll make a note about that. Now, this narrator also appears in the stories called The Beachcomber and Mudlarking. In the Snowstorm at Weathervane Farm story, I got to tell you more animal names. I love that the husky is called frigo. In Italian, a refrigerator is called a frigorifero, or frigo for short, and that felt so fitting for a dog that never wants to come in from the cold. There was a line in there where the narrator calls the animals kids, and when I reread it today, I flashed back to a difficult moment at the emergency vet with our sweet doxy, Salcice, many years ago. She had congestive heart failure. and we were there in the middle of the night while they were adjusting her meds and my wife and I were absolute messes and the very compassionate vet who talked to us consistently referred to dogs as kids saying that these kids with heart issues etc and it made me feel like the level of emotion I was experiencing wasn't weird or inappropriate. I felt like a parent in the ER terrified for my kid and she was very kindly using words that fit that. And even now, thinking back to that level of emotional intelligence that she showed, it just makes me so grateful and I clearly still appreciate it a decade later. Words matter. In our last story, we visited the inn and did a bit of crafting. I learned to crochet as a kid from my mom, just like in this story, and have returned to it every now and then, always finding it a calming, creative activity. My blankets very much resemble the innkeepers with their hourglass shapes. Thinking about cleaning out cubbies in the inn made me think about a cubby in the hall next to my writing room right now that sits behind some closed cupboard doors, which my wife and I have made a silent pact to not look into. Our house is haunted by very friendly energies, but we both agree that whatever is in that cabinet is none of our business. Funny how you can just feel that in some spaces, right? And I've learned that good fences make good neighbors. So with that, I send you out into the rest of the day. I hope this week brings you moments of calm, watched through a window in a safe spot, that you know when you tuck in for the night that everyone is accounted for, and that you have a warm blanket to pull over you, even if it isn't even and perfect. Thank you.