My typing table faces west and looks out on what I call The Animal Highway: twelve feet of local growth grass between my windows and a row of lilac bushes. Late Spring, when the lilacs are in bloom, mild winds from the west share the air with the flower itself. Every breath takes in lilac. Animals believe the lilacs hide them from view as they come down from the mountain north of us to cross the creek south of us. Deer, hawk, weasel, woodchuck, squirrels, cat, coyote, bear - seen 'em all, even a wolf once, seen 'em all when they don't know I'm seeing, which is better because usually you only see a wild animal running away, so how much of a wild animal do you ever really get the chance to see? To watch a wild beast at rest or at peace with its business is to see that creature for the first time. It doesn't make one gasp the way flight does. It makes one smile with wonder as if settling into a hot spring under a starry sky. "Oh, Wow!" rather than "Wha', Huh?" In truth, though, I haven't seen an animal there for a while. A stand of sugar maple with some black cherry and ash is taking over west of the lilacs, just the other side, obliterating an old farm road, and that's where they're moving now.
There's a good foot or more of new fallen snow on the ground, so you'd think I'd be seeing a parade of critters heading back up the mountain to sleep or down for a drink. One of the most astonishing sights I've ever seen was at dawn in a suburb of Pasadena, California, of all places, on a ledge overlooking a deep, dry, wide gulch where I nursed a migraine and watched what could have been a hundred coyotes retreating from the heat of the day back up into the shade of the hills. Now, staring out my window, nothing. A forest flush with life yet nothing. Birds. Nothing wrong with birds but these flit unpredictably like dots on a screen and flash no color unlike that brazen cardinal that's commandeered a roost in our rhododendron out front.
What I'm seeing are endless shades of gray. Where there isn't grey, there's white like the chests of chickadees (and even many of those are gray), or white snow settled along a limb like a snake waiting to drop. Such a limited palette. So much silence. What's there to hear? So much gray. Where to look? Everywhere is everywhere.
But, today the sky is dusky blue and the winter light off the pristine snow is blinding as we await what's predicted to be a no nonsense blizzard with marauding winds and sub zero temperatures. Power may go out, but we've got lots of wood and a small portable generator, enough for adequate light and an electric blanket. Standing order: Keep a flashlight right where you can get it, not handy, I mean right where you can get it! Attention must be paid: do not flush while power is out. Don't ask. Now, it's 4:19 pm, and the dusky blue sky has taken on the color of the snow, no longer blinding, mixed with gray. Rather dull but word is Friday will be fifty degrees with two inches of rain shifting to three degrees south of zero with ice palace conditions. The stuff of the Apocalypse.
But, today.
Eight thousand forty six minutes of sky light. At exactly 4:48 pm., the North Pole tilts furthest from the sun. Solstice. The Winter One. December 21, 2022. Mother Earth shifts her gears. She cocks her head and reckons a different direction. It is the shortest day or, as others would have it, the longest night. What was mid-afternoon is now total darkness. In our family, we don't so much as head into the longest night of the year as much as continue through a night of our own. Some sort of respiratory plague has managed to KO any and all celebrations and most celebrants, including our beloved, Joe, who died last week at the unlikely age of five. There is no more space at home taken up by a creature of that name - not next to my desk nor at the bottom of our bed, not when UPS delivers a package, not when his favorite person in all the world - my daughter - comes home from work. His water bowl is where he left it. His bone as well. My neighbor brought his backhoe up to our barn where we buried him.
But, know what? We don't live in Ukraine. Our ills, for the most part, are your standard Winter variety. Nasty, but they'll pass. The frig is full. As of tomorrow morning, so is the oil tank. The Subaru starts just dandy. Even though one might be an aging, Russian, Jewish intellectual, one is allowed a bit of the Pollyanna: Life sucks but its bright side really does not.
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