January 21

Odd how standing in the cabin, feeling the sun pour down over me for the first time in months, there awake the quietest intimations of spring already. It is twenty-seven below, with a dusting of new snow, but in that bath of light there is a kind of stirring. Your eyes note the chickadee instead of the raven or the magpie. You note that the gloaming comes later & lingers a bit past the late afternoon before the moon crests above the range blood-orange or silver-white. & all at once, I clutch the more tightly to the winter & lean into the thought of warmth. So many miles yet to mush, & at the same time, I feel a bodily need for sunlight again. Before the winter came, we all told ourselves that in its frigid months we would have time to slow down, reacquaint ourselves with ourselves, work on projects & the like. & now, halfway through it, I am no less busy, only more quietly so. My busy-ness does not involve hundreds of calls & blips & beeps at work, & when I recreate, it doesn’t involve throngs of wondering tourists. It is that muted tone of the winter landscape, that broad brush of real isolation. The panting of the dogs or the soft crunch of the snow underfoot. The wind’s stubborn song uninterrupted by passing buses or planes or the sounds of neighbors outside. Only that precious silence in which you stand as the sole & only fortunate audience time to time, your ear attuned & your eyes closed against a gale, thinking over & again, how lucky.

Comments

Kristin said…
Me, too.

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