Being. Friends.

The eastern sky is a solid wall of pinkish-orange, verging on that only-at-sunrise red, and the clouds make a fish scale sort of herringbone pattern. If I was a sailor, I’d be taking warning.

Rabbits are fed and watered (including our free-range skipper, Oscar, who gambols about the back yard, pushing snow aside to get at the tough grass below), last night’s dinner dishes are drying in the drainer, and my mug of green tea is warm but not too hot, safe now to drink without scalding my mouth. A fresh ball of no-knead artisan bread dough is tucked into an old yellow Pyrex mixing bowl on top of the fridge to rise all day, and I’ve just scraped the last spoonful of plain yogurt mixed with dark chocolate cinnamon granola out of the little ceramic bee bowl I bought from Gina at White Swan Studios—a favorite artist I met a few years back at a Country Living Fair. All in all, a glorious start to the day.

We’re going to visit with friends later this morning for brunch, and it’s impossible not to bring gifts (we’ve tried). The common ground between us is rich and beloved—Patrick worked with both of them in medical supplies sales, and shortly after their first daughter was born, we began gathering around food. Our first dinner together was Mexican-themed. Jen is an incredibly skilled cook and baker (ask me sometime about the macaroons she makes); no one went hungry that night. They have two daughters now, and that’s where the gifts come into play. They’re adorable (the girls, not the gifts), and I’m a sucker for their squeals of delight when they reach into the paper bag and pull out something with their names on it. We’ve checked in with their parents on all this, and continue to receive a gracious green light. The older daughter shares my affinity for anything Hello Kitty, the younger one is all social and loves Elsa from Frozen. Patrick and Russell share mechanical interests. There’s always lots to talk about, and today will be no different. We’re bringing everything we need to make panini, some macaroni and cheese for the girls, and a paper bag filled with joy.

When we moved out here, coming up on twenty years ago, we stretched the bonds of friendships that were more city-based and nurtured, not realizing that, over time, the visits and phone calls would wane and move into months, then years without much contact. No deliberate event tinged with anger or offense, just everyone getting on with the lives that were immediately in front of us. I suspect that if we all found ourselves in the same room again, we’d bridge the gap with smiles and curiosity, make good on promises to get together with food between us, and keep the storytelling up for hours. When a friendship can do that, it’s pure gift.

That’s not to say we don’t need to work at these long-distance relationships. I’d not be so casual and cavalier to expect that I bear no responsibility for the essential maintenance that all healthy human bonds require. But the rules of engagement must be elastic, and mutually agreed-upon. Then all parties involved can get on with it and collect the memories that good friends cherish as sacred currency in the economy of love. My purse, so far, has never been empty.

So we drive to Columbus or Delaware or Rochester, NY, or they come out here (wearing boots and jeans most times, because long walks are on the agenda), we eat like food was just invented, and talk about the important things. There is always laughter, sometimes tears, and a decent helping of philosophy with a few guaranteed ‘this would fix the world” strategies tossed in (followed by a sighing of “if only we were in charge”…). It’s a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon, giving us all something to look back on when we’re slogging through an especially slow Wednesday.

Not bad for a bag full of Hello Kitty and Frozen, and a hot panini press on the counter.

Let’s eat.

Anticipation

Sybbie crouches below the dragonfly shepherd’s hook planted firmly in the frozen ground on the ridge to the west, watching as the red-capped plastic bird feeder dangles in the chilly wind. Her whiskered expression shifts from concentration to hope, as if one of her winged quarries will simply drop from the breakfast buffet into her mouth. Fortunately, for the fat cardinal busily cherry-picking at the sunflower seeds, his hunger hasn’t distracted him from keeping an eye on the furry ground below. He eats his fill and flies off. Sybbie shrugs her shoulders, scouts out the prospects at the other feeding stations along that same western ridge, and sighs into the memory of dry food waiting in a warmer place by the kitchen stove. Friday’s 7” snowfall is now a melting shell of its former self, and I smile as Sybbie picks her way across the yard to the porch, making sure to place her paws exactly in the prints she made two days ago in her first attempt to dine al fresco. I open the screen door to let her in.

The entire scene takes place at the start of the third day of February, where we can almost see spring’s fingers curling onto the edge of our hope and grabbing hold, to pull itself up and over into our winter-weary souls. Last week, I stood in the middle of a polar vortex as the truck’s engine roared to life almost defiantly in the -28 degree air. Today, it’s supposed to get up to 51 degrees. Sybbie’s footprints will be harder to find by the time the sun goes down.

You’ve heard my position on complaining about the weather, so I’ll be brief: it’s not about us. I also know full well the joy of un-hunching our shoulders, after weeks of being locked into position against the cold, to relax into the first “no jacket needed” day of spring (I know people who would sacrifice limbs and almost children for that, though I’m grateful they don’t. A good change of season needs both to be fully enjoyed and appreciated). But in the end, nature will do as it pleases, and we’ll do it better if we relax into all of it as best we can. I watch the birds at the feeder, and Sybbie below it, for guidance. They work with it.

In the meantime, I glance at the weather app predictions on my phone, and trust that I have more than enough layers to put on and take off as the temperatures dictate. I don’t mind. I have plenty to keep my hands and brain busy if I choose to stay inside—there are journals to be bound, granola to make (a new recipe this just this morning: Dark Chocolate Ancho Chili Cinnamon, with toasted pumpkin seeds. See? You’ve forgotten the melting snow already). Two dear friends came over for cooking and lunch yesterday, and we walked down the path past the sweat lodge, taking a left into the meadow. We came across tracks in the snow and gave our best Animal Planet explanations about who made them. One thing we know—there’s a rabbit out there who is an Olympic-trained jumper. Such distance between each long-footed impression! The weight of my boots reminds me of my place in the Big Picture as I leave a trail of size 6.5 close-together tread marks in the snow. Even with the warmer temperatures this week, I suspect we haven’t seen the last of it, so I’ll keep those 6.5 size boots close to the front door for a while longer.

After our friends left, I meandered down to the bridge, and looked past the railings to see two elongated melted spots where the thin ice was giving way to the creek’s insistent movement. It was like peering down into a white-framed window, where an entirely different world was arranging itself and getting on with it. Barley audible, I watched as gallon after gallon of icy water rushed onward beneath the layer of unmarked snow-cover, enchanted. Branches from the black walnuts stretched across the banks trying to touch each other, and I hoped the warming trend this week wouldn't trick them into budding too soon. But hey, they’re trees and know far more than I do about such things.

I gave the scene one more achingly grateful gaze, and left them all to it. Rushing creek water, smart cardinals, and leaping meadow rabbits are all the signs of a longed-for spring I need today. It will come, and I’ll be ready.

At Last, I Get to Wear My Boots

The first snow of the season is thick on the ground, and winter is finally behaving like it should. I make no apologies for loving every flake, every drift, every schlufffff sound my boots make as I walk to the rabbit hutches to replace their frozen water bottles with thawed ones, and scoop the little green feed pellets they love so much into their makeshift dishes (vintage mid-century modern ashtrays, a couple of thrift store cereal bowls abandoned by the sets they once belonged to). I’m wearing my headlamp but really don't need it; the glow from the vast expanse of snowfall beneath my feet offers plenty of light for these pre-dawn chores.

It’s glorious, this weather, this day.

Every tree branch, fairy garden prop, handmade lawn art sculpture, bottle tree, birdfeeder and gourd birdhouse wears a pristine and tall white snow-wool cap, waiting for the photo shoot people to arrive (they’re not coming, but that doesn’t matter). The weather-guessers predicted “up to 9 inches”, and offered the usual snow-to-rain equivalents data, and I rarely find that comparison interesting or helpful. I’d rather just enjoy the snow as snow, and not the torrential disaster it might have been if the red line on the thermometer was taller. Can’t we live in the present, people? I’ll try to be more understanding.

It’s entertaining to watch our newest egg layers, six sweet little Cuckoo Marans, stretch their naked yellow feet to reach past the doorway of the coop, gingerly dipping a toe (claw? talon?) into the fluff of white in the run where their feeder rests, ready for breakfast. It’s their first snow, so of course they’re cautious, and maybe a bit put off, mixed with mild curiosity. But when the older girls, our Golden Comets, barrel past them, pushing and shoving because they’ve seen the feeder, they know it’s time to eat and that’s all that matters, a would-be chicken “first snow” Hallmark moment dissolves into survival of the poultry fittest, and both varieties get about the business of establishing a hungry pecking order that will carry on until dusk. It’s all about the food for these ladies, and I envy them. My life is so full of other trivia. To be focused on food…ahh…

I bought a half-dozen flannel shirts from a few local Goodwills in the past couple of weeks, fascinated and eager to try fading them in a forced way—bleach, water and vinegar, and lots of hot water. Haven’t done it yet, and today, I’ve claimed my favorite one, a lovely blue/white plaid pattern with buttons at the cuff that allow me to adjust the fit at my wrists, to keep me warm over my other favorite shirt (a “Silent Weekend” jersey, purchased for the occasion of gathering with Deaf and hearing folks for a weekend of American Sign Language and camping, back when I was a student in the ASL/Deaf Studies program at Columbus State Community College). On top of these two layers, I add a gray OSU hooded sweatshirt, and then one of Patrick’s lumberjack jackets, a red Abercrombie & Fitch ski hat (another Goodwill find) and now I’m ready to take the trash to my truck, only eight feet from the porch. Overdressed, perhaps, but, I usually get curious beyond loading the truck bed on these short jaunts, and find myself down by the bridge, filling my mind and eyes with the paradox of rushing icy creek water, framed by snow frosting on the banks. I stand there, trying to receive a lovely mix of emotions rising to the surface—gratefulness, the ache of witnessing such beauty before me, delight, and some wincing regret at ever having to continue down the driveway to go to work, or the grocery store. I want to stay here uninterrupted by such folly. Forever. Extra layers of clothing give me the gift of remaining entranced and captivated by my surroundings without hunching my shoulders against the cold.

I know it will melt someday. Until then, I drink in the images as if I won’t wake up tomorrow to see them, and impulsively fling my arms open wide to match my grin.

No apologies for liking winter. Not a one.

Deep Autumn

We’re at that spot in the season where “Naked Acres” is living up to its name.

I walk the fields this morning, after a far-too-long absence, and tree limbs are bare, their leafy clothing laying in mostly tidy circles around the base of their trunks, rings of fading color that give one the idea of where Christmas tree skirts were first imagined. The woods reveal their secrets, carefully hidden since June busted out all over with shades of green not found in any Crayola box. Now, mid-November, I can see where the land rises and shallows out, where the swampy puddles thick with those fallen, faded leaves and soil sit in reflective stillness, and wash out the deer tracks I was following. My late-August melancholy has moved into a cozy first-snow anticipation (not the dusting we had week before last, but a thick white icing that holds my footprints), and a renewed gratitude for warm socks and waterproof boots that only surfaces this time of year.

All seasons are beautiful, no matter how the weather may inconvenience our ability to experience them comfortably. It’s not about me. It never has been. A woolly gray blanket of sky, a stiff and cleansing north wind, and the soft clacking of chilled-to-the-bone tree branches are gorgeous all by themselves. If I didn’t exist at all, they still would. I take my place in the scheme of things easily, and without disappointment.

As I made my way back from the woods toward the house, I checked on a few things—the old turkey pen, which we plan to repair and transform into next year’s meat chicken house, complete with an open, high-fenced run where they can, well, run in all directions until the chicken wire re-directs them. I tidied up this year’s empty chicken pens, put the detachable corrugated roofing on top of the sturdiest one and bungeed it down hopefully, against those January north winds. The day before Thanksgiving, Patrick moved both pens, with chickens still in them, all the way from the field behind the house, down the hill to one of the egg-layer coops—a Herculean feat that I wish I could have witnessed (I was at work, moving less formidable piles of paper). He made half a dozen of these pens as our meat chicken enterprise grew, so that we could pasture our birds comfortably and safely, moving them and the pens around on 3+ acres of grassy field. The pens are open-bottomed, about 2 1/2’ tall, and wrapped in chicken wire. We cover them with a thick corrugated plastic roof panel that we can remove to replenish their feed and water. When it’s time to relocate the chicks, we remove the roof panels, step inside the pen, and grab hold of the top frame, lifting it just a couple of inches off the ground, and gently nudge the chicks along to their new section of fresh grass. It’s slow and careful work, with much flapping of wings at our feet, and it feels like we’re wearing the clumsiest of wood-and-wire skirts above our ankles, leading the birds in some weird sort of poultry dance. I wonder what we look like…

One of the chicks escaped in spite of Patrick’s slow and careful pace, and I found her this morning, having taken refuge in the branches of the willow tree that died in the summer’s barn fire, and now lay patiently waiting to be turned into sweat wood. She pecked here and there at the ground where the pens used to be, and wondered where all her friends had gone. I followed her to the edge of the thickest cluster of willow branches and gathered her up, crooning that she’d soon be reunited with her pals as I carried her down the driveway hill to the old cinder block coop. They seemed happy to see her, and eager to hear tales of her harrowing survival in the un-penned wilderness.

A pale sun is now making its way across the sky, and I finish up my morning chores of feeding and watering the egg-layers (a Speckled Sussex sneaks out between my feet as the others shove and crowd each other around the feed tray), and raking up sopping wet leaves that have collected by the back door to the mud room. I’ve got a list of indoor projects that I’ll get to after breakfast. But I’ll be taking images of this morning’s walk in the door with me, fully and deeply aware that it’s going to keep getting darker until that quiet moment in late December, when the solstice brings us the gift of incremental light, one frozen day at a time.

I can’t imagine living anywhere else.