High Mountain Musing

The mild winter continues.  Fascinating are the subtle variations within each season, especially our long winters which on the surface appear so similar in starkness; each day a frozen facade, lacking depth and differences.  Nine winters we have experienced here and each with a personality of its own. Each more than a little distinct.  Last year was noted by ice.  Layer upon layer that grew as if alive, pulsing with the winter mood of the mountain, slow and hard and emotionless.

This year there is little ice.  The snow seems to spread directly on the river and creeks.  I question its ability to hold even me each time I cross but see the moose tracks before me and find comfort and wavering confidence.

This winter has an easier mood. A few days colder than any others just to keep the averages in line.  Otherwise, a little less snow, a little less wind, a little less chill.  Mild. Comfortable. Comforting.  My home feels like a content place.

Easier.  Winter is not half over here. We have much work to be done.  Our lives our bustling with the well anticipated and needed change.  Electricity in the air, charging us and our lives with excitement.  The exhilaration of change, now put into action.  We can enjoy our memories, but need not grasp for what is no longer there.  I do not cling to what I no longer am. Where and who and what am I now?

Now. A perfect moon low in the sky, its cool silver light reflecting off the white ground, reflecting off the heavy clouds, the echo of this watery light.  Each molecule of air seems to embrace the radiance. Our world glows.

Now the clouds are swathed in a silver and gold luminosity and the moon slowly settles behind the mountain.

In a matter of moments, I will notice each time I look up a little more clarity in the sky, a little less magic.  Day prepares to rise.

How many mornings have I seen the moon slip behind the mountain from the warmth of my home while in the dark crystalline world outside my window temperatures are so far below zero, far below anything elsewhere I have lived through?  So close, so thin are these walls and windows, so often I step out into it all.  My home is not a bunker in which I remain hiding, but a haven I return to, rest in, allow to be a part of the wintery world while smoke rolls from the stove pipe, down the valley, dissipating into nothingness.

How much wood have we burned to allow us the warmth to remain here?

How unnatural at times it seems when I remember the fresh green of garlic poking through rich black moist soil in perfect lines and patterns of deliberate life, and tilling beds in preparation for carefree sprinkling of carrot seeds, a simple random toss that produced sweetest rewards. These were other times, other mountains.