Alexandersmap

    Category: seasons

    • Into the Morning

      I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
      flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
      as it was taught, and if not how shall
      I correct it?
      Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
      can I do better?
      Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
      can do it and I am, well,
      hopeless.
      Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
      am I going to get rheumatism,
      lockjaw, dementia?
      Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
      And gave it up. And took my old body
      and went out into the morning,
      and sang.
      — Mary Oliver, I Worried

      I let the pup out this morning as I do every morning. She was inclined to stay out longer, and longer still. I glanced out the window and saw she was prancing in the deep snow. There were no rabbits or mice or moles scurrying away from her, just a dog doing her dance with life. And I wondered at my choosing productivity instead.

      The world will go on. We learn this in time. And we learn to focus on getting things done. Our particular things. Productivity and efficiency become tools of our trade. We trust in our routines, rely on our habits. Growth becomes incremental. Sometimes surprisingly exponential.

      When we are focused and engaged in a life we love, we forget to worry so much. Worry is for the less busy. It’s a sign that we aren’t using our time in the way that we’d like to. We think too much instead. Do something with the time and the worry recedes. Worry tomorrow, for we have things to we’d like to do today.

      And so I’ll publish this blog. I’ll roll into my routine of being all that I can be. After all, the world is expecting me to be me today. But that dance in the snow sure looks fun. Far more fun than worrying or resolutely getting things done.

    • For the Love of Winter

      “I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn’t show.” — Andrew Wyeth

      I would be lying if I were to write that I love winter the most. It’s true that I do love winter, and snow, and the cold dark indifference of the long night. But to say I love winter most is to ignore the very best days of spring, when the daffodils are blooming and there is hope in the air. Or the warm comfort of summer days, with the meditative delight of deadheading the flowers and plucking cherry tomatoes from stem to mouth. To say nothing of autumn, in its kaleidoscope of color and the smell of leaves returning to earth. Like children, we may love each season in their own way.

      The trick is to love each day, no matter the season, for all that it brings to us. To pine for other seasons is to concede our agency over now. This is our time and place. We are right here and now because of the choices we’ve made in our life. So embrace the cold with another layer and venture out into the wild world of winter. Or simply grab a cup of steaming tea and a great book if you like. The days are what they are, and soon they’ll lead us to another season with something else to complain about or secretly love, whatever our inclination might be.

      When we approach today as if it’s a beautiful day to be alive, the day comes alive for us. Stack enough days together this way and we have a great season. And these seasons do blur together after enough of them. So celebrate this one, and maybe do something with it to remember it by. Winter is here, bitingly cold and alive. Take the day in hand in all its stark beauty and dance with it.

    • Touched

      “The snow doesn’t give a soft white damn whom it touches.”
      — E.E. Cummings

      Have a look around this winter day. How do you feel about snow? Remember, in answering, what we mean to the snow.

      One’s relationship with snow often comes down to what one is prioritizing that particular day. When we focus only on the bleak reality of our day, snow tends to be nothing but a barrier. We want to get from here to there, but for the snow. We want to park there, but for the snow. Et cetera.

      Alternatively, we may find all the truth in the universe buried like treasure in snow. When we seek council with it, we hear whispers in its silence. When we get out in the world with it gliding or tromping or rolling in it, we find delight revealed in ordinary. When we grab a handful and sculpt it into something alive in our imagination, we are transformed together into artist and form. Temporary and beautiful in this dance with infinity, before one day being transformed again into something else.

      Do you see? Like life itself, snow is neutral and indifferent. It’s people who transform it with meaning. So again I ask, how do you feel about snow?

    • Twice Beautiful

      Beauty is twice
      beautiful
      and goodness is doubly
      good
      when
      it concerns two wools
      socks
      in winter.
      — Pablo Neruda, Ode To A Pair Of Socks

      There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who complain about the weather and those who dress for the weather we’ve been blessed to experience this day. The former tend to shelter in place. The latter tend to step out into it. I don’t judge either camp, but I’m clearly in the latter.

      While snowshoeing Saturday morning, I came to a split in the trail. I went to the left that morning, breaking trail and returning with the thrill of having been out in it, doing the work of being fully-alive on a bright clear morning. But all that evening I thought about the path not taken. It remained unbroken and unexplored, and with that, I felt incomplete. Those paths not taken have a way of haunting us, don’t they?

      The only thing to do was to go out again Sunday morning to see what was left for me. I silently hoped it would be unbroken still, that I might finish what I started. I saw footprints in the snowshoe tracks I’d laid and thought to myself that the opportunity was lost. But the footprints crossed the bridge and then turned back, indicating someone inclined towards common sense. Why continue on trails without the proper gear?

      The thing is, I had the proper gear. And so I kept on walking to that fork in the path and turned right onto a gloriously unbroken trail, blazing a path for any who might follow. There is sheer delight to be found in the cold stillness of a pristine snowy forest, so long as you’re prepared to be out in it and have the tools to make your way back out again no matter what.

      Having completed that walk, I doubled down with another, bringing the pup to the beach for a second winter walk. That proved far colder with wind chill cutting through our gear. Cold is one thing, cold wind is something else entirely. Even proper winter gear will let you know when it just isn’t enough. We simply have to listen to what nature is telling us.

      The pup loves the beach and could have stayed all day but for the wind. Even clad in a winter coat of her own, she knew when we were having too much of a good thing. Sometimes the best thing to do is to step out into it. And sometimes it’s best to simply turn back with stories to tell. Two stories in fact. Twice beautiful, simply for having ventured out to meet them.

      Two paths diverged. Hampstead Conservation Land.
      Snow on dunes. Hampton Beach State Park.

    • Another Day Forgoing Mortal Nature

      Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
      There are four seasons in the mind of man:
      He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
      Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
      He has his Summer, when luxuriously
      Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves
      To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
      Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
      His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
      He furleth close; contented so to look
      On mists in idleness—to let fair things
      Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
      He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
      Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
      — John Keats, The Human Seasons

      I’ll admit that I don’t often revisit Keats poems, but when I do, it’s usually in the cold, dark winter months. This morning the dog food stored in the garage was frozen (frozen!), so I had to bring it in to thaw so the pup could have a bit of wet food mixed in with her dry. These are first world problems I admit, but on the last day of January 2026, let it be known that I fasted in sympathy with the dog until her food thawed out.

      Today is just another day forgoing mortal nature, but there are only so many days. We ought to live like we were dying, as that twangy formulaic song goes. To kick mortality down the curb with a better fitness routine and better choices about what we eat. To read and learn and sharpen the senses while sharpening is still possible. To go and do while going and doing are still in the cards for people in our particular season. Our routine determines the season we find ourselves in as much as the accumulation of years does. We mustn’t get old before our time.

      Consider that Keats poem again. The man was frisky! Delighting in lusty Spring and satiated Summer, acknowledging that in Autumn he was more inclined to let the fair things pass without some inappropriate gesture from the aging poet. It’s only in Winter that he calms down, recognizing that growing old and brittle is a trade-off for death’s final embrace. For all our human nature, it’s eternity that we will sleep with forevermore. We just don’t have to be in a hurry to get there.

    • The Glorious Thing

      “Your mind now, moldering like wedding-cake, heavy with useless experience, rich with suspicion, rumour, fantasy, crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge of mere fact. In the prime of your life.” — Adrienne Rich

      What a glorious quote. A poet struggling under the weight of identity, breaking away from the storybook life expected of her, stepping into a new narrative. We are transformed by thought and action, or we will remain forever imprisoned by expectations.

      No matter how much we replay it, our past is dead and gone. Our present is tenuous but malleable. Now is always the prime of our lives! To break free of now and create a bold new future is audacious. May we find that within ourselves and steer towards a course that makes our heart race with anticipation.

      It’s easy to feel frozen in place in the dead of winter. Every day is cold and dark. These last few days I’ve had flights and the plans related to them cancelled. Meetings fall away one-by-one, and empty spaces take their place on my calendar. These are merely facts of time and place and winter weather. The easy thing to do is nothing. The glorious thing to do is to seize the opportunity. Each day offers the freedom to crawl into old, familiar habits or leap into a new identity. Be bold today.

    • Winter Ghosts

      We see it most vividly when a fresh blanket of snow covers the landscape. Like children in bedsheets pretending to be ghosts, the hardscape rises up in whispers, haunting us with what once was in warmer days. Of what may be again in whispers of the future.

      But not now. Now there is only silence and a cold tickle on the back of the neck. Ghosts? Or merely snowflakes finding skin? The imagination brings us to our version of the truth. The only truth here is the quiet embrace of winter.

      Whispers of warmer seasons

    • Conversations and Calories

      “Joy is not produced because others praise you. Joy emanates unbidden and unforced. Joy comes as a gift when you least expect it. At those fleeting moments you know why you were put here and what truth you serve. You may not feel giddy at those moments, you may not hear the orchestra’s delirious swell or see flashes of crimson and gold, but you will feel a satisfaction, a silence, a peace—a hush. Those moments are the blessings and the signs of a beautiful life.” ― David Brooks, The Road to Character

      The last few weeks of the year tend to fly by more quickly than all the rest. Holiday parties, reunions, the rush to get gifts and wrap them—it all adds up to a frenzy of experiences lumped together where one doesn’t stand apart from another, but instead they blend into one. Conversations and calories accumulate in rapid succession, we grow satiated and yet want for more. The shortest days of the year thus become some of our most full.

      To focus on improvement is to step back towards balance, towards that which we aspire to be. Balance is a word that infers we have somehow become unbalanced. But don’t we wish for the richness and delight that those conversations and calories bring us? Sure, moderation is the key to a healthy life, but we starve ourselves all year. A few brief hours of richness and delight offer their own form of balance, should we recognize the moments for what they are.

      We know that those calories add up and that the scale doesn’t lie, and soon there will be renewed focus on moderation. We know that people return to their routines and begin once again to look ahead to longer days. There will be days of quiet solitude that whisper of loneliness, if we let our guard down, if we begin to compare what we have on our busiest days with what we have when the schedule is full of blank spaces. We ought to remember that life ebbs and flows, and the ebb is as natural as the flow. Accepting both is the path to a beautiful life.

    • The Joyful Stir

      “You must learn to drink the cup of life as it comes … without stirring it up from the bottom. That’s where the bitter dregs are!” — Agnes Sligh Turnbull

      Celebrating the holidays is easy when we’re around friends and family. It’s not as easy for those who are alone. Some are blessed with an abundance of people in their lives through proximity and an inclination for connection. Some go out of their way to stay away. Be yourself, but know that you always have a place at our table.

      I have two neighbors who have lived next to each other for a quarter century who won’t make eye contact with each other but go out of their way to say hello to everyone else who walks up the street. Some people are naturally closer than others. Something was said, some point of contention remains, stubborn righteousness kicks in and the years go by with scarcely a nod between them. It’s extraordinary to behold.

      Generational baggage clings to some families. Like my two neighbors, whatever it was that happened, it never fades away. Awareness reveals entire family histories. A family may be at the same Christmas party and be as far away from each other as if they were in separate countries, while laughing and bonding with the rest of us. Why? Only they know, but the holidays are no time to stir up the bitter dregs.

      We ought to learn to be alone, if only to ensure that when we inevitably are, we aren’t so lonely. To be alone in a room full of people is an inclination, as much as not being lonely when there’s nobody there but us and the ticking clock. Joyfulness is an active-participation sport, and we reap what we sow. We ought to learn to let bygones be bygones, even in these contentious, divided times, and find a way back to connection. We must keep stirring joy, for when something is bitter, a little sweetener goes a long way.

    • A Change in Inclination

      Rain and wind, and wind and rain.
      Will the Summer come again?
      Rain on houses, on the street,
      Wetting all the people’s feet,
      Though they run with might and main.
      Rain and wind, and wind and rain.

      Snow and sleet, and sleet and snow.
      Will the Winter never go?
      What do beggar children do
      With no fire to cuddle to,
      P’raps with nowhere warm to go?
      Snow and sleet, and sleet and snow.

      Hail and ice, and ice and hail,
      Water frozen in the pail.
      See the robins, brown and red,
      They are waiting to be fed.
      Poor dears, battling in the gale!
      Hail and ice, and ice and hail.
      — Katherine Mansfield, Winter Song

      With the winter solstice come and gone, I thought it timely for us to consider a winter song. For the days are short, cold and dark, but aye, they are once again inclined towards longer. To be on the other side of the shortest day may mean little when the harshest winter days are ahead of us, or perhaps it means everything. As with all things, the choice is ours. And isn’t our perspective on life mostly based on what we choose to focus on?

      Winter Song reminds us that there are people suffering in the cold and dark of winter. Consider this a call to action to help those less fortunate than we are—surely the world needs more people focused on raising the average instead of spreading the gap. We cannot solve the problems in this world by ourselves, but we can make each person we interact with either colder and darker or warmer and brighter by the way we treat them. Again, the choice is ours to make.

      We may have almost nothing in common with each other, but we have some things in common, and something is a foothold to more things. Footholds lead to connection, so long as we aren’t pushing someone away. Abundance is a mindset, just as scarcity is. As the days begin to grow longer again, perhaps that tilt of the earth may offer a change in inclination within—an inclination towards connection. ’tis the season, after all.