Ready for Wintering
The winds and rain have left the tree lines empty. Now barren brush skirting fields, high branches scratch at the skies of November. Pages from a scrapbook of summer, the leaves are now gone to the ground of history taking with them stories of early garlic and tulips, of July warmed beaches, tomato patches and August corn; of roadside stands and Saturday markets, mosquitoes and fireflies.
Beaubien, Conrad. A Steadfast Friend. Graphite on Paper. 2021.
A dressing of snow in this morning’s light gives away the footprints of creatures that roam invisible to us year round. I kick around a shovel stuck to the ground; me versus the cold in a race to turn the soil one last time. It’ll wait as I move about to rescue anything that should have been brought indoors by now. A human habit I guess to know that the season is changing yet wanting to deny the fact all in one cluster of thought. Over the years I’ve convinced myself that this is a good thing, the change of season that is.
Sailing in an island cove in the Caribbean I once seriously questioned whether living in a tropical region of the earth would continue to entice me as it did then. I was certainly willing to give it a good try to see how long it would be before the pangs of Nordic influence came beckoning. Maybe ask me that question again in February. In my mind I was creating Utopia as I came to terms with the fact that every segment of the globe has its challenges in the changes of season. Bottom line is quality of life where in the end, especially as I age, nearness to family trumps all.
The marked changes of time of year strip the landscape bare, telling of its skeletal form. Travel through those recently canopied places with now opened ceilings offer sightings fresh with appreciation. How the layers of clothing beg a sense of protection; hot stews and soups and a mix of winter comfort foods are a break in our diets; our entertainments shift.
Easy to heighten those things that are assets to seasons’ change in the want to balance the parts where cold and diminished light can have an all pervasive impact on mood and sensibilities. As I wander the garden this morning I sometimes feel as if waiting for a train, me as a passenger wanting that train to take me to the land of early sunrise; where it seems that it is sunlight that I quickly miss the most and as sure as the telltale tracks of animals are given away by the snow, I begin the effort not to be enveloped in the emotional cavern that a scarcity of light invites. The hope is in the knowing that the train will arrive soon, for it departs on winter solstice for a journey toward extended daylight. Solstice marks my true calendar, my body calendar because solstice is about the pull of the heavens in an unwritten story that is imprinted into our being.
I will celebrate with my donkey friends Thunder and Joe, as with lantern in hand we will walk into the darkness of December 21, the ancient’s night of the dread yet dreading not but believing that within a relatively short turn of the earth the buds of spring will announce to this Nordic man, a renewed season of the earth. A first chapter will open in a new scrapbook marking time.
Published in the Wellington Times
