This Day of the shortest length of Daylight of this year. This Winter Solstice.

This very morning, dank as it was, I was all set to go be part of a group standing in a field watching the winter solstice sunrise at 7:12am EST. This very morning, dank as it was, I didn’t wake up in time. I am not one who oversleeps! I am not one who sleeps beyond, latest (and rarely this late) 6:45am. You can rely me to be up by 6:10am just about any day of the week, of the year, of the decade. So I do not set an alarm.

Ah me. Only MAria’s persistent nudge, paw to my right hand, driven by her own internal clock that says “6:00am–breakfast, breakfast! I have been on the windowsill with occasional forays to the bed, then back, keeping watch on you, Kate. I have watched each breath you breathe and noted the disrupted ones, the ones that tell me that you, Kate, are beginning your ascent from sleep. And Kate, you are quite good at meeting my daily vigil in a timely manner. But today, Kate, you are late!! I am not only pawing you now, I am miaowing. You are late!!!” She prevailed, I awoke, I asked for another minute, but she miaowed rather insistently, so I sat up and saw, across the room, the clock. 7:00am!

So I did not see the sky lighten, nor the possible glimmer of orange-gold through a quite thick cloud cover from a hill overlooking the Merrimack River at 7:12am. I did not hear the chorus of birds–carolina wrens, chickadees, song sparrows, house sparrows, mourning doves, robins–who had awakened a bit before the sun rise. I did not catch glimpses of scuttling skunks, meadow voles, or rabbits. I was in my kitchen scooping Fancy Feast and medicine into Maria’s and Stella’s bowls at 7:12am.

And then oatmeal into my bowl. And an orange. And coffee.

And then I finished reading the novel I was halfway through. And then I vacuumed my house. And then I had a cheese sandwich.

After this, my, when I see it in print, monotonous morning and just-post-noon, I went out, exactly when the predicted, and cloud-density-proven-to-be-snow began to fall, and it is falling in earnest. Little tiny flakes, like white rain rather than marvelously, uniquely shaped cutout worthy, sit on your tongue large flakes. I think someone once told me that this is because it is very cold. Many things are very cold these days. And many are too hot.

I went out and took a stroll to and through “my” utility cut pathway.

I annoyed a maple tree bristling with robins. The lot of them flew in pairs and triplets to another maple about 100 feet northwest behind my peering self. I broke through a couple of thinly ice-coated pools. I stood and stared up at an immensely rotund redtail hawk until she could stand me no more, and she flew about 200 feet behind me, in a slightly more northeasterly direction than the community of robins. So busy was I with my binoculars, that I got no phone-photos to share. And, perhaps I spared a robin from become a redtail hawk capture, or put the other way, deprived a redtail hawk her food.

When winter comes, barring climate creep, barring weather anomalies, barring utility cost assessment games.. what do you think of, what do you anticipate, what do you rediscover?

One that I do, living in a climate that includes snow, is silence. The snow covers reverberations, echoes, yelling, stomping, revving. Outside in it, everything is less, I don’t even need to hear me. Inside seeing it, remembering it from times before, knowing it always offers this, I feel the breath of my lungs and the lips of my mouth loosen and broaden.

___________________________

Peace Love Joy

Tomorrow, or so, the earth will begin to tilt its north half closer sunwards.