A winter of our content or dis-?

Today we’re seeing an occasional snowflake drift to the ground. Ponds and puddles are refreezing. Deciduous trees are mostly bare branches. I’ve traded my summer pjs for winter-weight ones. Even if the longer term weather forecast makes allusions to warmer weather by Thanksgiving, I doubt it will last long.

This morning we saw a chevron of Canada geese against the gray sky as we were returning some political signs we had posted on our property. Already the phrase “just settled down for a long winter’s nap” keeps resounding in my ears. Extended seasonal weather forecasts look very much like the old “pay your money and take your choice.” Some anticipate normal snowfall, others say it could be above or below normal. Pretty much the same for temperatures. At least I’ve got a stack of books to read and even more to reread.

how long until ice-in?

Photo by J. Harrington

This winter I may try an approach different than my usual over-controlling OCD style. Can I get through the next several months living in each moment, one day at a time? This may be a good winter to try it, because events throughout the world, and the country, and even my county are all uncertain enough that  it  would be foolhardy to count on anything except mainstream and social media doing their best to keep US stirred up. I’ve had about as much of that as I want. Time to go haul some leaves and branches out of the drive and into the woods before they get snowed in and mess with snow-blowing the drive clear.

The Promise We Live By

By Simon J. Ortiz

On the West Coast, days of rainstorm wrestle

the Coast Range, their wet fury driven landward.

We never quite known what the sky promises,

and there is certain assurance in that fate.

It is for that we wait. We’ve already weathered

more than promises. They’ve passed us by.

So I’m not sure this morning when I step outside,

and suddenly it’s not winter anymore but some

warm mask that molds the contours of my face

with unbidden warmth. It’s almost unnatural

but I hope not, having already found reliable

the promise of loss. My expectation is unfulfilled.

Somewhere within the universe of the prairie hills

is a climate that is yet unnoticed, and from it

is welling a warm rupture of another sure season.

Believe it is not unusual, I urge myself

whose myths are always changing in the light.

So it’s this we arrive into daily, always

another season, warm or frigid, and it’s we

who wage weather within our furious spirits.

Tomorrow’s dawn is a promise that will fulfill.

Never mind if the sky does not quite agree.

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