Winter Again, Winter Still

Cottony tufts of snow dot and adorn every notch and crotch in the trees we live among on this fine mid-February morning. Words fall short, though “enchanting” comes pretty close. While my back was turned to the south window of the studio-guest room-home office yesterday afternoon, the skies shook loose a steady shower of snowflakes that were determined to barely touch each other upon landing. Gravity held them gently as they built themselves into airy see-through mounds on every available surface. All of our feeders and birdhouses now sport top hats of chilled fluff and I’ve swept off the porch four times. No trip into town for the farmers market this weekend. I can scarcely find our car.

Two weeks ago, it was sixty degrees. A flock of robins hopped and bounced across the lawn and I saw a solitary dandelion thinking she’d get the party started for the season we all love. “Fool’s Spring”, they call it, and we skip to the nearest hardware store in search of potting soil, mulch and petunia seedlings for around the apple tree out front. But the rolling plant racks are bare and folded up against the wall, and snowblowers still take up most of the entryway’s real estate. We sigh and pick up new gardening gloves (we always need those) and wander over to the paint section with its brightly colored swatches looking like tiny rectangular flowers. Back at home, scarves and fleece-lined boots will stay put for now by the door and we’ll thumb through the seed catalogues one more time in case we missed a new tomato variety.

Friday’s return to a winter we never really left took too many of us by surprise. I rarely look at a forecast anymore with a hybrid remote work schedule that only pulls me into the city two days a week. Stepping outside to feed and release the chickens is easily managed without a lot of wardrobe planning. If I’m over or underdressed for that, it will only last as long as it takes me to trudge back up the driveway to the house. But two weeks of almost jacketless temperatures lulled us into a false spring start and now those same robins looked confused as they perch in the bare branches, their thin feathered shoulders hunched against the north’s stiff wind. Where did the grass go? No one wants to peck through the snow to eat a frozen worm.

We’ve got a few more weeks of this, my friends, no matter what that groundhog in Pennsylvania says. And no guarantees that it won’t snow for a minute in April as we’re setting out the cabbage seedlings. Kale can handle that kind of a weather gear shift but we’ll be babying the tomato starts until we’re sure they can establish themselves without fear of a smack down frost. Until then, it’s snow and fifteen degrees for a while. With the space heater going in the studio and bookbinding supplies spread out on the worktable, I’ll get by.

Underground

We have a most dedicated team of moles with whom we share the land, making us wonder when our house and porch and outbuildings will fall into the open maw of some inevitable sinkhole that they’ll show on the 6 o’clock news from an overhead drone’s perspective.

It’s why all our boots land well above the ankle and knee-high wellies are the footwear of choice in the rainy spring and autumn seasons. Few things are more strangely satisfying than sinking your foot into a grassy narrow speed bump and watching the slurry squirt out from the other end of the tunnel you just collapsed with your weight.

I’ve had the privilege of seeing these industrious land mates of ours above ground, their grey fur the very definition of velvety, their eyes tightly closed against the bright light they know little about. Even rarer is watching them at work just centimeters below the surface, a patch of grass and soil moving almost imperceptibly and the cats frozen in anticipation, their paws gingerly patting the trembling ground. Once I witnessed Bumper (one of our freebie rescue tuxedo kittens) attempting to pluck a critter from its nest by extending the full length of his leg into the hole; he was in up to his little armpit while the rest of his body coiled and twitched in pure feline predator mode. He came up empty-handed (pawed?) but the entertainment value of his effort lingered well past the lunch hour. I admire and envy his tenacity.

All of which tugs at my curiosity (often in tension with my deep respect to let other living beings get about their business without any help or interference from me) as I imagine what goes on beneath our feet or careful watch on a daily, even hourly basis. As a child, I stood fascinated for as long as my parents would allow in the agricultural building at the state fair, watching a glass-enclosed slice of beehive and its occupants crawling and buzzing over one another, their agenda not quite clear to my five-year old mind. It looked like chaos but it didn’t matter. The need for understanding was set aside for the full immersion experience of wonder and awe as only a child can enjoy. I sighed, looking over my shoulder as we moved on to the kitchen gadget demonstrations in the next fairgrounds building.

Every day I face and embrace the limits of my knowledge and understanding, which bedevils the heck out of my curiosity. To the exclusion of my grown-up responsibilities, I want to sit on a fallen black walnut’s massive trunk from sunup to sundown and just watch as the forest unfolds its day before me. You know, notice things that I can’t see from my cubicle on the 21st floor on Wednesdays and Thursdays. There’s a place on one of the field paths where groves of young sycamore saplings join their slender branches over my head. On some of the drier morning walks, I drop my walking sticks and lie down, my spine adjusting to the exposed roots hiding beneath last year’s leaves. What a different view that is…noticing how the sparrows hop along the smooth bark and tilt their heads toward me, assessing the danger I might present. In full summer, I get to see what the underside of those leaves look like without straining my neck muscles, tracing their veins with my gaze until something nudges me to get moving before I’m late for work. More sighing as I stand up and finish the sacred and treasured beginning of my day, wincing wistfully for all I will leave behind.

We get glimpses, don’t we, of the myriad other lives going on alongside our own, drama and simplicity playing out simultaneously just beyond our vision. And then we keep moving, taken up with the details of the plans we made, the deadlines we’ll miss by an inch and what’s for dinner. A coworker’s answer to “how are you?” slides off us on the way to a rare in-person meeting and we have no idea what else she’s walking into for the remainder of her day. Hard battles and cherished joys alike, there’s a thrumming below the surface of our existence that we’ll never see, roots and still waters that run deep and out of sight. Curiosity gives way to respectful trust, the fertile soil of human kindness and somehow, the whole human enterprise chugs forward, no matter what the headlines say. I sometimes wonder if the glue holding us all together comes from the prayers of monks in their monasteries and folks who pick up the trash they see on the sidewalk, even though they’ve got a bus to catch in three minutes, and all the other unseen acts of generosity that never make it above the fold. On this side of the sod, I pray for an awake and alert spirit to catch the slightest movement toward peace, no matter how faint, and the decency to pause, to participate and join the effort.

Beneath the surface…maybe that’s where our hope for survival lies.

In A Word

I had lunch last week with a friend who has the ability to slow down time. I can’t explain it any further than that. I just know when it happens and am humbly grateful for it.

I also have a small crack in the heel of my left walking boot, making this morning’s stroll through the swampy paths back to the woods a soggy one, despite the plastic bread bag I slid over the sock on my left foot. Two socks left the mudroom dry. Only one returned.

A few weeks ago, I sat at my studio table facing the backside of a painted-on canvas, contemplating my guiding word for the new calendar year and determined to set it down on a “vision board” in collage format (there are parties for this, gathering people together around food and supportive conversation, anticipating how the word each of us selects will keep us grounded, focused and on track as we make another trip around the sun. It’s a reassuring way to step into the unknown). I save gardening magazines for this purpose, along with a few home improvement and flea market decor-themed ones because they tend to offer the best font options in their advertisements and the colors are pretty. Choosing the year’s word, though, is a bit more involved.

In past years, I’ve tried on “humility”, “focus”, “relax” and “creativity” (that last one felt like cheating; I’m steeped in creativity every single day. Isn’t the word o’ the year supposed to make one stretch beyond their current comforts? I’ll have to consult the nonexistent rule book on that) but none of them ever deepened in meaning as the year unfolded. Like a dieting new year’s resolution, previously selected words fell off the edge of the table before the snow melted and by September I’d forgotten what I was thinking in those wee hours of January when everything was new and accomplishable. But this year, things felt different. Five months into a new job, reinserting myself into the urban dynamic by way of a twice-weekly bus commute as far from the secluded embrace of our land as I never imagined I’d ever be, feeling a heady mix of familiar and strange all at once, 2024’s word was inspired and came effortlessly: Connection.

I’ve added 33 new people to my life just during the workweek days alone, sitting in meetings with fellow decision-makers whose world view and opinions are vastly different from my own but we’d never know it based on the common ground we share. With so much division, rancor and vitriol poisoning our morning hot beverages as we start our days scrolling or turning paper pages from one bit of bad news to the next, “connection” feels like a salve, a cotton blanket warm from the dryer to wrap ‘round shoulders weary from the weight of it all. It’s an urgent, whispered directive to keep looking for the good, to presume benevolent intention and allow for the raw, unfinished business we all carry around with us to be forgivable context for the choices we regret making in front of others. We’re hungry for that kind of grace but feel awkward asking for it. Bridging the chasms between us over lunch or a hot matcha latte seems like a good place to start.

So I’m putting the brakes on judgment, sending text and voicemail messages to friends and coworkers I haven’t seen in five months, asking for time to meet over food in a noisy pub or on a Sunday late afternoon phone call. We fill in the gaps with stories that melt the distance between us and end our time together with the promise of more time together (food optional, hugs expected). I’m making good on my promise to forget where my phone is and wander off toward the woods where the trees are swaying hypnotically in a wind none of us predicted. When I close my eyes, I feel them pulling me into their rhythm and drop the last remnants of tension that followed me on the walk. The rough and wet bark of a red oak against my cheek is enough to remind me of my Place in the world and I leave behind the echoes of a heart overflowing with appreciation for my luck to even be here. The water that soaks my sock is now a sacred foot-washing moment, as far from uncomfortable as I can get.

Lunch with my time-slowing friend was the first of many connections I am well on my way to making as we round January’s corner into the month of Love. I’m not checking them off any list but adding them to the talisman bundle I carry with me beneath my skin, protection against the despair that isolation brings. There’s so much and so many I still don’t know. But this year, I’ll do all I can to meet them, to learn from them and be different because of them.

And just because I can, I’m going to teach myself how to knit.

Tucked In

It’s 4 degrees outside and the furnace just kicked on again, cycling the temperature in the living room up to a more comfortable 67. I’m gathering the momentum to suit up and head down to the coop where the water in the repurposed metal steam pan is a miniature skating rink for our fourteen feathered Hans Brinkers. It’ll take a gallon of hot tap water and about 30 seconds to break it loose before I can add another gallon of slightly cooler water. If I had warmer boots, I’d stick around to watch it slowly refreeze but I’ve also got a customer who wants a tray of our new lemon honey rosemary granola. Duty calls.

For the first time since we took on a flock of layers, we’ve got a hardy crew that seems happy to keep us stocked in omelettes and quiches well past November, when most of our previous breeds powered down to take a break from supplying our breakfasts. Not these ladies. They’re averaging five to seven eggs a day, and I’ve found only a couple that were frozen rock-hard and cracked. The rest are buried deep in a nest of pine shavings on the coop floor, some of them even still a little warm (which means they were either just dropped there or we’ve got a broody hen in the flock. I’m fine either way). I tuck them into my coat pockets and as I’m leaving the fenced-in run, remind myself out loud that I’ve got eggs in my pockets, lest I become distracted by some random yard project and start moving tree limbs or pulling down grapevines with enthusiastic vigor. The fridge is beyond capacity for full dozen cartons and I’ve got takers at the office. That’s nice in both directions.

The view through the 67-degree living room windows this morning is deceptive—bright yellow sun and endless blue as the backdrop for the trees on the ridge, but one quick trip to the truck to load up this week’s meager two-bag trash deposit for the bin at the end of the driveway and it’s back inside, boots off and under the blanket on the couch. In the studio, a pile of magazine paper beads rests as evidence of what a house-bound person can accomplish with a guillotine paper cutter, some glue, a 3 1/2-inch framing nail and Deathly Hallows, Part 1 playing in the background. I’m looking for new ways to describe “cozy” as I consider more than a tray of granola on the baking agenda for this afternoon (sprigs of fresh rosemary drying in the dehydrator, lemons scrubbed and waiting on the drainboard to be zested and juiced, olive oil and flake salt on stand-by). Maybe a sausage-and-spinach quiche big enough to yield a couple lunches for the remainder of this four-day work week. Patrick is still asleep; I’ll take his silence as the go-ahead.

I’ve come to embrace and enjoy our evolution into this cold-forced introversion, with just enough socialization to keep us from becoming the crazy old couple that lives way back in the woods, the stuff of neighborhood legend and Halloween hijinks at the hands of our local youth (the ones who take baseball bats to our mailbox at the end of the quarter-mile driveway in the summer under cloak of darkness). For two of the three days on this long holiday weekend, we have braved the cold and crowds at Costco, treated ourselves to a hearty Mexican lunch and are still keeping the idea of going to see “Wonka” this afternoon in our hip pocket. Call it retirement practice or the privileges of being obliged to no one. We are happily agenda-less, even as we watch flocks of overly busy sparrows and black capped chickadees pecking diligently at the frozen suet, embarrassing us with their work ethic. Deep down we know we are a fragile and helpless species in the grand scheme of things and keep our heads in the humbly bowed position as we brush the dry snow off the front porch, wearing enough winter gear to resemble the Michelin Tire mascot.

By the looks of things, we’re in for more single digit temps for the rest of the week (perfect for babysitting a defrosting freezer during one of my work-from-home days). We’ll take them, one blanket, one quiche, one tray of granola at a time.