full fathom five

High Sun

Even though yesterday's storm dumped another eight inches of snow on us, making the snowbanks on the sides of the roads so high that we can't see around them at stop-signs, the midday sun is breaking winter's back.  There's a steady dripping or cracking sound all around our house, as icicles melt and crash to the deck and front and back door-stoops.  The sun is straight over the house now at midday, beaming down on the roof snow till it slides slowly down the skylights and glass roof of our sunroom, dropping with a whump to the foundation of the house.  The resulting four-foot high snowbanks surrounding the sunroom have protected it from the below-zero winter nights, keeping our plants thriving.  The other night when it was about five below, my husband and I remembered that we'd forgotten to bring the auxilliary heater up from the basement to plug in in the sunroom, as we've had to do every November or December since we've lived here.  This year it hasn't been necessary, and we're sure it's because of those four-foot banks of snow tight up against the foundation all around. 

    And because the sun's so high, the dark blue shadows of trees have shortened across the meadow, showing more clean white stretches of sunlit snow lightening the landscape.  This makes it feel almost warm as we strike out across our back meadow on cross-country skis, wearing sunscreen to keep the sun coming off the snow from burning our faces.   

    The sun's stretching the days dramatically now.  When we head out on our walks at 5:30 am, we only have to have the flashlight on for the first twenty minutes.  After that, the road lightens to a beautiful medium-blue facing west, violet to the east.  And yesterday, dusk didn't come till after 5:30. 

     Our dog Cody loves to lie on the highest snowbank surrounding our house, right off the kitchen.  He looks down the driveway to the road, surveying his domain.  I watch him out the window as I do the dishes; his eyes close against the warm sun, and his head droops as he struggles to stay awake.  Chickadees dart back and forth over his head from lilac bush to bird-feeder, calling their two-noted spring song.   

    More snow is forecast for the coming week, but winter is on the wane.      

Cross Country Skiing

Today in the lull between snowstorms, on our first day of sun after about five of constant snow, sleet, wind, and gray skies alternating with white-out, I cross-countried down the power-line corridors with my dog.  I went about 1pm, when I figured sun and temperature to be highest, and I found myself thinking that this is the lemonade we're making of the fiercest winter I can remember, and it's not so bad.  Our Cody frisked ahead, lunging at occasional dead beech leaves that strayed across our trail or lodged in the snowy borders.  The power-line poles laid shadows of french-blue stripes across the blinding-white snow.  My skis scritched through the mealy snowmobile tracks with long schuss-sounds that broke at the ends, more like shutch-shutch.  Level stretches allowed for long strides that gave a feeling of authentic nordic mastery for a few fleeting moments before one edge strays into a deeper groove or I wobble over a patch of pebbled ice.  Conditions are tame enough, though, to glide across the power-line field quickly, and I work up a sweat in fifteen minutes, with Cody lying down in the snow to chew snowballs out of his paws.  In forty-five, we've looped the perimeter, and I'm happy to get back to the car with warm, loose limbs and no falls.          

Cold

At 4:50, my husband and I stumble out of bed and feel around in the dark for long underwear.  Then someone gets a light on, and we pull on polypropelene turtlenecks, jeans, and fleece vests; then into the hallway for down parkas, fleece neckwarmers, facemasks, and hats; then we tug on boots with felt liners over two layers of socks, and last, gortex gloves.  By this time it's after 5 and our dog Cody is whining at the door, ears and tail low with impatience.  We open the door fast and squeeze through it almost as one to slam in the heat behind us.  Then with the surprise of falling in water, I feel bitter air envelop me and I pump arms and legs against it, trying to outwalk it down the driveway. The cold magnifies all sound, and our feet crunch through patches of crusty snow like someone ripping a head of lettuce in half right at my ear.  The cold crisps the edges of the full moon overhead, pulling it out from the black backdrop of sky; everything comes forward, penetrating the senses, in the frigid air.   

    When we reach the long sweep of paved-road down the hill from our house, we see the wind moving down the asphalt towards us in snowy veils and spirals. There's nothing to do but tuck your chin deep into your parka and charge into it.  Even so, needles of snow sting my eyebrows.  If we weren't still groggy from sleep, we wouldn't be out here, I think.  I've tried enough mornings to put off exercise till I'm in my right mind, and end up never getting to it.

     By this time my glasses are so fogged up by the breath steaming out of my face-mask, that I have to take them off.  Icy air cuts into the skin around my eyes as I slow to zip the glasses into a pocket.  This is another reason it's good to walk in the dark; I can't see much anyway, so it's no great sacrifice to walk without glasses.

     It's been this way for four days, from minus three to six-above, but this also was the weekend of two outdoor parties planned around the full moon.  One to sit around the woodstove in some friends' backyard for rum and hot-cider and a picnic dinner, and the other to cross-country ski down the local river to a bonfire with more hot-cider.  I braved the one on Friday night, my husband having to play out-of-town with his band, and it was so cold that by the time we poured the steaming cider from the stove to our cups, it was just lukewarm.  When someone commented that the roaring stove didn't seem to be giving off any heat, our host said, "well actually, when you step back from it, you can feel that it is."  None of us dared try, and didn't care about heat we couldn't feel anyway.  After about twenty minutes, I said I wanted to go in to - heh - help my friend with the soup, and everyone else shot up from their chairs to "help" too.  As we hurried up the lawn to the house, our host set off a long string of fireworks behind us, not cherry-bombs but the tamer high, starry pink and green bursts.  Even so, the noise and explosions were startling, and the fact that no one jumped, jerked, or yelled - we all just looked around casually, then stood in the dooryard watching - made me realize how privileged we were: there in a safe place without backgrounds of war or violence to shock or cringe at sudden loud noises.  No threats here at all, except the bone-deep cold.

     The next day, Saturday, there was enough new snow for my husband and me to try cross-country skiing in the afternoon.  But the cold was so penetrating, my fingers were numb on the poles - even in goretex gloves - after thirty minutes.  So we wimped out of the ski-down-the-river party that night.

     And today, we got up at 4:50 and made the mistake of checking the thermometer.  One degree.  We went back to bed, telling each other that we'd go to the gym later instead.  Yeah, sure. 

   It's now afternoon, and I still can't face even going out to my car to drive down to the gym.                                     

Wisteria

My husband and I go down to Longwood Gardens outside Philadelphia almost every year at this time, trying to catch the Wisteria in bloom.  But we're always a bit too early or late.  Until last weekend!

The only way I could try to describe these later was bridal: the tiers and layering like wedding cakes, the long, drooping racemes like silk veils or satin trains.  But this leaves out nature, the angling of each bloom to maximize light, the thickening and twisting trunk to support the vines, the glorious color and baby-powder scent.

The next day we went to Winterthur, another magnificent garden about twenty minutes south of Longwood, where we caught the azalea and rhododendron in full-bloom.  They ran through the woods in great swaths of coral, magenta, lavender, and white, all reaching well above our heads as we walked.  In the shot below, the long, bare trunks of ancient oak and tulip poplar dwarf the azaleas, which are really about eight feet tall.  The canopy of these magnificent trees forms an extra roof over the lower, bushier beech and sycamore, sealing in and amplifying the liquid calls of woodthrushes. 

These long expanses of trunk are a rare sight in our country of second- and third-growth forests.  Their contours show the simultaneous forces of balance and stretch towards the light, readable in swells and indentations that look like well-worked sinews down a forearm or calf.  We move the same way, so the trunks feel familiar, like old friends who listen well.          

            

Spring walk

Today I made myself stay at my desk all day after getting out of class, and by three in the afternoon, little wisps of cloud appeared out our north window.  Thinking I'd miss the sun, I saved my file, put the computer on Coast, called Cody, and threw on my coat.  We got out in time to catch the last of the sun, and ran down the front field, heading for the hill where the dirt road peters out to a path through the woods.

 

When we got there, I shuffled dead leaves aside in the ladyslipper patches, but no shoots showed yet.  Peepers clattered in the bog, and phoebes flitted through the trees just over my head, adrenalized by mating calls.  Here and there I spotted a goldfinch, its back and wings still a dull winter brown, but its chest a bright yellow, promising spring. 

By the time we came out of the woods and walked down the road into the lower field, we couldn't hold ourselves back.  I felt like a horse just let out of the stable after four or five days inside.  Feeling the vibration of my feet as I broke into a jog, Cody looked back at me, caught my excitement and splashed through the stream up ahead.  I slowed enough to pick my way over the rocks.  Chartreuse tigerlily shoots pulsed against the brown mud on the other side, giving me another lilt that made me jog up the meadow towards the powerlines.

 

I couldn't keep it up for the whole hill, but I walked at a good clip up over the powerline corridor and down into the woods towards home.  Everything was still brown and dry there, but the maples had red leaf-buds on the tips of their branches, the beech had yellow spear-shaped ones, and mosses and lichen were brightening on the rocks. Everything was like a held breath, just waiting to burst into green.

 

I walked home, thinking that unlike my usual commiseration with my ESL students, out here, the English language suddenly makes sense.  Nature's first green, the yellow-green of new lily shoots - plus the clattering peepers and careening birds and high sun late in the day - make you giddy enough to Spring over streams and up hills across power-lines and into woods, all with new buoyancy and energy to spare.            

Happy Trumpets

Today my husband and I were having our morning coffee in the sunroom and reading amidst the flowers.  I was savoring the last two hundred pages of Gone With the Wind.  I looked up for a minute and noticed one of the buds on an amaryllis beside me was wrinkled, and I thought, Oh no, a dud.  I'm new at getting amaryllis to rebloom, so it's easy to doubt their health at the least anomalous detail.

Then I looked at the one plant that was blooming, trumpeting out its beauty in two opposite-facing blasts of Chinese red with white stripes, as you see below.  Beneath its blooms hung dried brown outer skins of the burst buds.

This reminded me again of a quote on Ronni Bennet's blog (http://www.timegoesby.net/weblog/) from Dr. William Thomas in his book What are Old People For? who tells us that in our post-sixty years, as our bodies decline, our spirits rise toward greater contentment.  So beneath our wrinkled skins, there's a remarkable power of adaptation blooming. 

I put down my book and told my husband this, and he pulled his chair closer to the amaryllis, sniffing the air.  No, they don't smell, but thinking them like us, I can almost see the buds swell as I inhale, breathing with us.     

blizzard food

It's a requirement, when temps are below zero and there's a snowstorm brewing, to put on a slow-cooking, hearty stew.  It's necessary for morale.  It gets us through the winter here in the grueling northeast. 

So it was lucky that this storm waited till the weekend to strike.  I was able to stop at the store late Friday afternoon, and cruise the busy meat-counter, looking for pot-roast material.  I ended up taking a pork rib-roast on sale, and carrots, onions, squash, and cabbage.  I seared the roast in olive-oil this morning, then put it in a dutch oven with chicken and beef broth, and braised it for four and a half hours - till it was falling off the bone.  In the last hour I put in the vegetables, and then my husband and I ate in front of the fire.

The stew was good, but it had already done its duty before we dished it out on plates; it had filled the afternoon's dry air with moisture and the aroma of pure comfort, telling us in the midst of high winds and ice-pellets bouncing off our windows, that everything was all right, that we would be safe forever inside our cocoon of pungent, porky fragrance.    

New Years Day ritual

My husband and I have a wonderful New Year's ritual.  Instead of staying up late New Years' Eve, an overrated night, to see in the New Year, we go to bed in time to get up before sunrise on Jan. 1st.  We drive to a small mountain in our town, and climb it by 7:15 am, when the first sun of the new year rises right out of Casco Bay in the eastern distance.

Yesterday's first dawn of 2005 was the most beautiful I've seen in the eleven years we've lived here in our little country town.  The early dawn sky was cloudless, and the distant bay and surrounding valleys were packed with mist.  The heavy ice on the trail coming up had prevented the usual people we see each New Year's dawn from climbing the mountain this year, and their absence made me suddenly aware of who they are in relation to the town.  They are the ones who fight hard on the town's various committees, to preserve the rural nature of our town.  And looking down on the town this way, I can see why.  Looking down on it this way, you want to preserve it just the way it is: an ethereal wonderland.  I feel so lucky to live here.

And to the east, the sun rose out of the mist near Eagle Island.  My husband snapped each stage of it with his digital camera, and by the time our neighbors came over to our New Year's brunch, we were able to give them a show on our computer.

Lengthening Light

Even though the wind blows sheets of snow across the fields, and snow pellets crack and spray against the windows at night, the mornings promise future warmth.  The eastern sky lightens now by 6 am, and out our west window these last two mornings, the full moon has set through the branches of the apple tree.  Reflecting off the snow under the tree, it made the sky a pale, daylight blue at 4 and 5 am when I got up to let our dog out and in.  So there's a surfeit of light now, as if the solstice has suddenly stretched since it arrived, to offset the cold.  It gives us hope despite a harsh and cutting winter wind.      

Snow Squall

I've been grading student papers to close the semester.  To ease the boredom a bit, I sat down in the sunroom the other day.  It's a "Victorian" sunroom we added on to the end of our cape home a couple of years ago, and it's shaped like the prow of a ship.  I sat facing the prow, where I could see the fields wrapping around the west end of our house from south to north.  Chickadees, nuthatches, goldfinches, and red squirrels darted around our feeders just outside the floor-to-ceiling glass.  Sun flooded the place, and I curled up on the couch with new energy to tackle the grading.

Suddenly I noticed the air darken.  I looked up and the sky had turned almost charcoal in the west, and a wind had kicked up, blowing the bird feeders back eastward.  Suddenly flakes swirled out of the charcoal cloud, billowing back past the windows in a white fog, blotting out the bird feeders and the surrounding fields.  As the snow blew backwards past the windows beside me, I suddenly saw the westward "prow" of the sunroom moving forward, parting the storm, which streamed sideways down the length of the room. It gave the illusion of forward momentum, making me feel like I was on a ship in the arctic, plying the white sea. 

We got the sunroom thinking it would enhance and lengthen our short Maine summers, but it surprised us, showcasing winter instead.  My husband and I spend long winter weekends there reading by the warmth of the trapped sun, even on the grayest of days.