Author: Kate Hemenway

Nevertheless, I will try to break it as it sit before my desk, before my window, watching rain, previously cold rain, previously freezing rain, previously snow perpetually since some hour this early morning while I slept. It is now mid, late afternoon. I am noticing that the 10 new inches of overnight have been reduced to probably 6 inches, sitting atop the 4 inches of two days ago, that began their morning as 8 inches, but, like today, seeped down and out to the roads, the walkways, the gutters, the exposed areas of soft surface anywhere as the temperature rose. Yesterday, walking was a mindful experience, having to look always at the next spot my foot would step or slip thus slide. Today, post shoveling, I didn’t even bother to walk, thighs, especially quads, too achy, and weather/surface conditions, too wet. Then there’s tonight coming up–temperature drops, and ah ha, tomorrow sliding/skating/slipping on sidewalks time. No matter the treatments we apply, and when walking, I pass over, alongside, around many manner of efforts to make the pedestrian’s way stable.

All this about weather, all this weather!!

We are so less than certain about so much in life. Damocles sword ever swinging.

What do you do when you are particularly uncertain? Do you pause? Do you ponder? Do you weigh options? Do you forge ahead? Do you put a toe in? Do you circle and pounce? Do you sidle into? –a decision, an answer, a conclusion, an action, a response, a choice. Do you have one way, always the same way, same tone, same expectation, of approaching uncertainty? Or are you situational? Circumstantial? Communal?

I believe I will ponder that question myself. I doubt I’ll let you know what my answer is. I doubt I’ll be certain it is the only possible answer. So I would buffer it, and is that helpful?

Would you lie to help someone? To maybe even save someone? Is a lie of omission a lie?

It must be the rain, raining down on me.

Perhaps it’s because it’s February and the groundhog prediction is for six more weeks of winter. Of the ground hog’s accuracy, there are arguers for both sides. Always. But it has been snowing here in New England an awful lot this month of February. Have I told you recently how grateful I am that I had a french drain installed last year? My wet-dry vacuum is wondering why I have ignored it since spring 2024. My cats, on the other hand, are grateful not to have to tiptoe to their litter boxes down in the basement. I will not subject you to pictures of them this time. I could!! But I won’t. You have been very patient.

This weekend is also the “Great Backyard Bird Count” weekend. I will like to believe my counts are so low because the weather is most uncooperative. There is one persistent member of several families: a titmouse, a chickadee (or two), a nuthatch, a downy woodpecker, two cardinals, and, of course, a dozen house sparrows flitting, fidgeting, flying. Oh and the juncos. Out front a mockingbird sits in the ornamental (read mock) cherry for long spells and scrunches up and scowls.

At the river a couple of days ago, a pair of swans swam downcurrent with me as I walked the length of the riverwalk.

However, look at these locusts!! The keep away message from the one on the left is clear. Although the squirrels, backing their constructed home on under-spiked locust, dare to stay close.

This is my February visit to you. Thanks for letting me in.

This is the end of the first quarter century (or is it the beginning of the 2nd quarter of this century?–Did 2000 begin us, or did 2001 begin us? Was the beginning a time and calendar turmoil, or was it a space odyssey (anyone who gets the references is, I am guessing, at least a quarter of a century old)

As I begin this post, it is Friday, January 10th. Yesterday, January 9th, 2025 this nation’s population honored former U.S. President, lifelong person of faith in God and in the tenet to love your neighbor as yourself, Jimmy Carter. I remember when he ran for office. Not knowing anything about him, I stood in Boston’s Quincy Marketplace and watched his young, enthusiastic smile and listened to his young, enthusiastic words and wondered. I believe he showed us how to become, how to be and become, good, again and again. This is what I would like to be, always in place, and always in motion for the good. And to see that and encourage that in “my neighbor”–who is anyone, who is everyone.

How often I fall short. I bet he did too. It is an element of the very good creation called human. We can fall short. We can also step in place, reground, and step longer forward. I am grateful that this is.

I’m thinking about how I opened this post–talking about a quarter of a century. That seems to me an enumeration of so much more time than 25 years. You? What do you think?

To open this quarter, winds have beset this country–literal–on one side chilling, on the other burning; and–figurative–on one side chilling, on the other burning. Many losses for many and very diverse people.

It’s hard to envision hope as viable for some. And yet, imagine the absence of that fragile emotion. From it comes strength, love, kindness, courage, faith, even, I believe, wisdom.

It’s late afternoon. Low sun sky, sunset in 20 minutes from this moment that I am typing. Will I complete this before the sun is now below this day’s horizon? It is a clear day, first in a few, gold glow is already dominating the western horizon, visible among the bare maples, willow, birches, nearly bare oaks and beeches, the box edges of houses, their angled roofs, the breeze rustling shrubs. The neighborhood dogs have all emerged in the last two minutes, announcing themselves. My nearest neighbor dogs beside and behind my place are Luca and Jack, and Guinness straight across from me. Three beauties. Three sweet companions to their families.

The edges of all structures, as I type–the houses, sidewalks, stairs, fences, chimneys, porches–are coming into detailed relief. No shadow to disguise them, no precipitation to distort them.

Here’s a poem I just found by Galway Kinnell, it’s called: Daybreak (hmm, I add)

On the tidal mud, just before sunset,
dozens of starfishes
were creeping. It was
as though the mud were a sky.

Note: the photographs were added, because I couldn’t leave you pictureless. Of course, one’s mind is always overwhelmed with pictures.

Thanks for reading. It is now 4:34pm here, the sun has set.

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.

Well, I had every intent to write a second October blog post. In fact each night that midway through I awoke and felt I was not going to succeed in falling back to sleep, I said in my head, I will get up and write the post. And then suddenly it was four or five hours later, a reasonable awakening time (generally 6:00 am for me), and I got up and went on with my day, unposted. This morning at 4:03 was no exception. And then it was 6:05. So here we are, more than 8 hours into November 2024, and now I will write and post a blog.

Such an unappealing word: blog. I just looked it up. “a truncation of ” weblog “”. Huh. ship’s log stardate 4304, or some such far future date as logged in Captain James Kirk’s audible book somewhere out there among the hugely colorful ephemera–particles and gases that comprise out there, as well as right here. If only James Kirk et al had had James Webb’s telescope to peer out into his spaceship’s surroundings, God knows how many light years away.

Thinking about time. I know I have struggled with this concept before on this medium, and, be assured, off this medium as well. How can there be time when there is so much outside of the planet earth that exists with us but not within our solar revolution, and axis rotation? How can we ascertain, how can we suggest that we even know what is the reality of all that light, dark, mass, energy that we cannot even see when blinded by our meager solar center in day, and still cannot see much of when we turn our earthly back on the sun?

And yet, we age–initially we get bigger, and more able, and more aware, and then we begin to shrink–physically, agilely, mentally… It is progressive. But it is progressive to us, but a blink, not even, compared with the enormity of that, that up above this paragraph which the telescope was able to see.

There are patterns, seen, measured, felt, repeated (naturally, after all, patterns….). These patterns are predictable based on experience and defined based on visual and auditory and sensory clues, and “proved” based on numbers. But they define only this place, here. And experience anomalies and are reconfigured and are constantly being studied, because, because they are not ours. We are aspects of them. And not a single one of us, even identical twins I dare say, are exactly alike. Yet all are from a source, an energy? a particle? a motion? a thought?

It’s now November. Chances are, likelihood is here northerly in the northern hemisphere it will grow colder (despite the past two anomalous hot days), all color will drain away, snow will fall, furnaces will kick on more often, etc etc etc. But guaranteed? Who decides?

Kate’s weblog, signing off. Earth date November 1, 2024 9:50am.