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November 23, 2005

Sledding

The Snow-Storm by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delated, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hiddden thorn;
Fills up the famer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.

Posted by pavel at 8:21 AM

November 22, 2005

Shades of Snow

There is neither heaven nor earth
Only snow
Falling, endlessly.

Kajiwara Hashin

I sometimes wonder what it must be like to live in a climate where the seasons actually correspond to the dates of the solstice and equinox that cleave our year into four equal and distinct stories. It is tempting to think that here in northern New England we live somehow outside the neat rectangles and numbers of the wall calendar, and, when I have found myself struggling against driving snow in September or sporting a t-shirt in January, I have felt that sense of separation. The calendar is, of course, driven by our own earth's tilting axis, and the earth, in all its billions of years of practice, certainly can't be entirely wrong.

Yet here I am, writing as the snow flies outside our window, exactly one month before the winter solstice. Four inches in as many hours, much of it now seemingly melting off the dogs' fur and onto the living room floor as they lie at Jen's feet as she nurses Orion. The woods, quieted by their sudden frosted quilt, were bright enough to walk through without a headlamp when I took Pika and Pemi for their evening walk. As I wove my way through beech and striped maple saplings bent across the trail, I would occasionally spring some larger tree and dump a load of snow on myself -- the dogs are smarter and more nimble in these conditions, though they are kind enough to wait, albeit smugly, for me to catch up.

I am a collector of symbols, of harbingers, of images, and as much as autumn lingers in my mind and prose from the mid-August appearance of the first goldenrods to the late October morning when I notice the tamaracks have lost their ochre glow, it is the coming of snowfall that abruptly changes my sense of the season from fall to winter.

Orion continues to astonish us with his growth from a baby into a little boy, and the images with which I try to anchor those changes move past so quickly that I have difficulty believing he was ever any different than he is at this very moment. He is fast approaching his first birthday, and even now every week is a new season of change, growth, and of becoming accustomed to a different part of our son's nature. There are days when he moves around our apartment, circling from kitchen to living room to hall, secure in his world. Other days, as he struggles to stand or tries to climb on the sofa, a sudden nor'easter of frustration can send his world tumbling in space. Like me, Orion, too, seems to be trying to frame his life -- and his growth -- in ways he can understand. As I read him Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" before my walk, I hoped that he might learn to understand the seduction of both the dark, depth of the woods in winter and the beauty that a late autumn snowfall leaves in its wake.


Please note: Interested readers may want to look at the newly uploaded entry for October.

Posted by pavel at 5:29 PM