Post in praise of ice (did I just say that?) or an interval of time

Ice forms among the bulrushes (West Quoddy, NS)

I am forever startled by how quickly night falls as we approach December.  We are in full sunlight and then suddenly we are in darkness; the icy surface of the pond and the sea hold the light a little longer, but then they too must give it up. First the land goes dark, and then the islands; finally the water joins them, an inky pool, noisesome in the darkness.

I sit by the fire with the cat. She has taken up her odalisque pose on the bench beside me, both of us craving the warmth, letting it radiate into our bones. A high of zero degrees today; when Marike and I stepped into the light for a walk, it felt as if the north wind was squeezing my face, pinching my cheeks, thumping my forehead. It took several minutes to get used to it, to stop feeling as if I ought to turn around and huddle indoors. Underfoot, the crackle and shatter of puddles become brittle ice--all of the water of the last days' soakings transformed into glittering patterns in the ditches.

We finally remembered to shut the windows in the bedroom and the bath--I had to climb on the garage roof and then the oil tank and push while Marike ground the windows inward and locked them down; they are secured now for the winter. We dumped three buckets of ashes over the wall, and hung out and then brought in an icy load of laundry. In the interim, we walked around the headland, down to the water, then back again.

Today the chickadees were puffed up and greedy for seeds--one bird, the smallest one, sat repeatedly in my palm and crammed as many sunflower seeds as it could into its beak, perhaps four or five, before flying away to cache them in the trees. We startled a grouse or two, and one or two rabbits, their fawn colouring giving way to snow now--just this week white patches have begun to spread across their noses and up the backs of their legs.

Once I was out in the sun, despite the cold, I didn't want to come in. It was high tide when we set out, the beach underwater, so we picked our way along mossy deer paths in the forest to get from one cove to the next. Once in the lee of the wind, we stopped to sit with the sun on our faces, eyes closed, listening to the suck and drift of the water, to the almost silent fanning of the weeds at our feet.

Just here, like this, I said to Marike, and you can imagine that life on earth is truly good.

Melt

Melt water gathers beneath the ice, runs out down the rock face and pools at the bottom of the hill. Freshets everywhere.  

To watch on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niu7Q5xPgVI&feature=share&list=UUgWDhn2jpndC4hdPd8vb0zg

When at first you set out

When at first you set out, your feet do not know where the road will go, or how.

The head thinks it knows, but it may not.

(After all, in the thick of winter, the leaves were supposed to have loosened, to have fallen. What then of such insubstantial strength, such golden light?)

Who can explain our brittlest survivals? Or the beauty of ice, in a broken space?
It befalls us: inessential, necessary, ordinary--as uncomfortable as prayer. 
What is the meaning of life?
Why are only some days full of light? 

For those of us already living, what matters in a new year is to perdure, to endure--there is no experience without an undergoing,  without perseverance, without suffering.

Lightening struck, we stagger, try to be like that tree that groaning, still stands.
Noble beyond reckoning. Beautiful in every cracked and shattered limb.

All hope is here: not in what is absolutely new, but in what there is to learn from those who carry on, blind as we all are, but abiding, open-hearted.

After the freeze

After the freeze, a thaw. Rain. Fog. Gusts of wind rattle the frost-bitten branches, toss chunks of ice to the ground. We crush them underfoot. And now another freeze, a breath-stopping chill that icicles your eyelashes. This is the way we will face the new year: swaddled in layers, our cheeks stinging with cold, breath turning to frost as soon as it strikes our scarves.

Last night I dream that everything in my office is burning; there is nothing we can do but get out before the roof collapses. All of my papers, my notebooks, the photos and the books are consumed by flames. In my dream, my only regret concerns the notebooks from last summer, from the trip to Alaska; I've not managed to make anything from them yet. I reach for them, and they whirl apart into cinders. We race from the building, dodge falling beams, and finally stand outside looking up into the night sky. Flames shoot through the roof; we are deafened by the blazing fire.

Suppose indeed, nothing were to be left?
Nothing? What of your memory?

Okay, nothing but my memory.
And the possibilities of imagination.

Yes, that too.
What then?

We'd start over again then, I guess.
Or tell new stories.

Yes.
And what if you were to begin anyway now?

Even without a conflagration?
Yes, even without a conflagration.

I don't know if I could.
You mean you don't know if you could want to.

Yes.
What is old is new again.

Fire and ice

Two nights after Christmas. We are somnolent and turkey-stuffed. The booming draws us to the windows, the flashing lights keep us there. Fireworks! With each explosion, the snow covering Lac Brome lights up. The colours are something out of Breughel, bonfires beyond the trees. The frozen world glitters in the sudden light.

These last dark days

Snow on ice the day after Christmas. We go for a walk and everything is quiet; just one car passes on the road. Our boots crunch against the cold snow; a spring burbles up out of the earth and rushes, ice free, beneath the trees. Silence: the snow has muffled the tinkling of the ice covered branches as the trees sway under their heavy loads. All day we are in twilight. And then night falls, and with it more snow.

Ice cold apples