January 2015 - A Wooden Heart

In the flush of a Maine summer I often wonder, how did I endure January? Just as I wonder now, with two half-grown children, how I endured the diapers and sleepless nights of their babyhood. Or the raw and loveless years of my early 20s. I promise myself every summer that when midwinter comes, I will finally unlock the secret to surviving it – to surviving difficulty in general. And then bring that lesson into the rest of the year.

 Although the solstice passed nearly a month ago, this is my lowest point. The cheer of the holidays are a thin echo, the thermometer sits at 10 below, and I wade through the huge evaluation reports I must write at the close of each year. Like many other folks, I face a dead pine tree, several extra pounds on my belly, and a gift-swollen credit card bill. It’s time to cut back and pay up.

But even a wooden heart is a buoyant one. Unless we’re broken, we tend to float upward. The secret to surviving January is that the scale shifts, so that the sunny day we would have overlooked in May becomes a source of great joy when it sparkles on snow.  In January a friend’s hug feels warmer, and coffee feels better going down. Our emotions bounce up and down within their usual range, but the highs are triggered by smaller things. Hard times seem terrible in retrospect, using one’s current scale for reference, but in the moment they had their bright spots.

Do your worst, January. You’ve only got 2 weeks left.

October 2014 - Rodents in Motion

The wet cloak of Fall sits over our valley, stifling light and sound. We wake to a dawn that can’t break, muffled chirps of birds, and the air so full of cold water that invisible droplets tickle our faces. Trees that were blazing with colors look muted now, their leaves suspended in the heavy stillness.  

Another sure sign of Fall: the rodents are in motion. All summer they have been hiding in the grass, leaves and hollowed trees, content with food, but now frost nips at their backsides and tells them to find a new place. The scent of a skunk drifts through our windows at night. A porcupine shakes its spears in the middle of the road. Squirrels scamper back and forth. One morning, we find a pink and grey possum on the lawn, a victim of our shepherd’s vigilance.  The rodents search for their winter dens as we stack firewood and load a year’s cache of sweet second-cut hay. 

Only the grass in our East pasture doesn’t know. A long, glossy green velvet, it sends tender shoots into October. The sheep watch us and bleat as we set their fence around the perimeter of a new pie-slice of field. Let us at it, let us have one last taste of summer.  We secure their shelter against the hurricane winds of autumn and wonder how far we will be able to get across this field, how many weeks of rotation, before the frost yellows this grass too and the sheep will have to return to the barn.