Alexandersmap

    Category: seasons

    • The Reassurance of Snow

      Whose woods these are I think I know.
      His house is in the village though;
      He will not see me stopping here
      To watch his woods fill up with snow.

      My little horse must think it queer
      To stop without a farmhouse near
      Between the woods and frozen lake
      The darkest evening of the year.

      He gives his harness bells a shake
      To ask if there is some mistake.
      The only other sound’s the sweep
      Of easy wind and downy flake.

      The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
      But I have promises to keep,
      And miles to go before I sleep,
      And miles to go before I sleep.

      — Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

      Winter hasn’t been normal the last few years in New England. Heck, what is normal nowadays anyway? We don’t always have to love snow, but we know it has its time and season. When we get it we celebrate the magic or curse the timing, disruptive to our very human plans as it seems to do. With it we recalculate what is possible in our days. Without it we wonder what we can control anymore in an upside down world.

      Snow in January calms me. Sure, there are inconveniences and struggles associated with snow that are not found in southern climates, but with snow we get the reassurance of the seasons playing out. We must embrace change in our complicated lives, but Lord give me a winter in wintertime.

      I write this on a mountaintop as snow falls all around this snow globe paradise. There’s magic quite literally in the air, and it piles up like dreams in a blessed lifetime. I watch with wonder knowing I have work to do still, but like old Robert Frost once upon a time, a pause to wonder at the beauty of a snowy moment is warranted. For the world goes on, and our youthful dance is the briefest of seasons.

    • Let Us Play

      “Health lies in action, and so it graces youth. To be busy is the secret of grace, and half the secret of content. Let us ask the gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than in consuming them. In Utopia, said Thoreau, each would build his own home; and then song would come back to the heart of man, as it comes to the bird when it builds its nest. If we cannot build our homes, we can at least walk and throw and run; and we should never be so old as merely to watch games instead of playing them. Let us play is as good as Let us pray, and the results are more assured.” — Will Durant, Fallen Leaves

      Health lies in action. We know the drill: sitting is the new smoking. We must get up and move, and not just move, but delight in moving. To play is to live. Life is full enough of tedious moments, don’t you think? Our exercise ought to be fun.

      For me walking is a more fun form of exercise than just about anything save paddling or rowing. Walking in places that inspire and awe is wondrous, and ought to be a regular part of our routine, but sometimes a simple walk around the block is enough to reset the soul and stir the blood. Sometimes we focus so much on the spectacular or the glory of the summit that we forget the benefits of the activity itself. We must move, and glory in the act itself.

      This past weekend I’d contemplated a hike. Knock off a couple of summits that were particularly evasive for me on the list for one reason or another. When you hear the call of the wild you ought to listen, but sometimes that call is a siren. It was treacherously cold in the mountains, the kind of cold that will ruin a perfectly good day for the prepared, or kill the unprepared. Not exactly the play I was craving: lists be damned. So instead of a 4000 footer I opted for sea level and a January beach walk. Also bitingly cold, but distinctly more accessible. It also offered an easy opportunity to simply bail out and get back into a warm car (or bar) if needed.

      My bride and our pup are both beach bunnies at heart. Off-season walks on the beach are their kind of play, and mine too. I can spend all day at the beach so long as I’m not lying still like something that washed up. Surf speaks to me almost as much as summits do, and I view a great walk on a long beach as delightful as any walk can be.

      We chose Hampton Beach, New Hampshire for our off-season walk. We wanted to take stock of the damage from the winter storms last week, and to have a long stretch of beach sand. That biting cold ensured few people would brave the exposure of the beach, so our only company were other dog walkers and a few determined metal detector miners looking for lost riches. We each chase the American dream in our own way, and everyone needs a hobby.

      We should never be so old as merely to watch games instead of playing them. The trick is to stay in the game. To play in the sand is just as fun as playing king of the mountain. Just move, and delight in the company of others. That’s a simple recipe for a great life.

      January at Hampton Beach. Lot’s of footprints in snow, few people.
      Winter means walking in brisk solitude

    • First Snow

      I’ve had many snowstorms in my lifetime. Blizzards and lake effect dumpings, heavy wet snows and light and fluffy snow globe snows, white-outs that scare the heck out of you and ever-lasting slow drifts that barely seem to pile up. You tend to grow used to it after awhile, but that first snow of the year is always magical. Having a few mild winters in a row, and snow this year taking forever to reach the part of New Hampshire I reside in, it just began to feel like we’d never get another good storm. So there’s delight when if finally arrives, tinged with calculations about cleanup, road conditions, viability of the power lines and how much bread and milk one might consume before it all spoils.

      This first snow brings with it the perspective of a puppy, just nine months old, experiencing a heavy accumulation for the very first time. Now this in itself is appointment watching, as she steps timidly outside at this new world awaiting her, sniffs and licks at the white blanket and slowly steps ever deeper. My own obligations took a back seat as I watch her figure it all out. Eventually she grew bolder and began walking more quickly, and then in a spark of instinct or insight, began to prance like a deer through the drifts, ever faster. Soon she was running about the yard like it was her best day ever, and who was I to argue?

      The thing about heavy snow days is you learn to time the cleanup, that you aren’t out in it all day long, but you aren’t letting it accumulate so much that it’s difficult to work with. There’s an efficiency to snow cleanup that is learned through experience. Whatever the perfect moment is, it feels like the entire neighborhood decides to go out at the same time. The nods and waves and getting back to the business at hand inevitably follow, like some scripted scene from a pharmaceutical company’s drug du jour commercial. We’re all keeping an eye on each other in a way, even as we mind our own business.

      With all the responsibility of adulthood, sometimes we get caught up in the cleanup and calculations, and forget to just play in the snow. A new puppy, like children, teach us to delight in the wonder of a fresh snowfall. To roll about in it and clop through it and fly across it laughing at the sheer magic of the changed landscape. The cleanup is never the fun part, but we ought to remember the do fun part in our rush to clean up. Life deserves more magic and delight, don’t you think?

    • So Much to Admire

      I know, you never intended to be in this world.
      But you’re in it all the same.

      So why not get started immediately.

      I mean, belonging to it.
      There is so much to admire, to weep over.

      And to write music or poems about.

      Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
      Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
      Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
      Bless touching.

      You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
      Or not.
      I am speaking from the fortunate platform
      of many years,
      none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
      Do you need a prod?
      Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
      Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,
      and remind you of Keats,
      so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
      he had a lifetime.
      — Mary Oliver, The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac

      Whispers from a poet, reminding us of the urgency of the moment. Tempus fugit… time flies. Go out and live boldly. Observe and be stirred—get right in the mix. And create something meaningful that might stand on it’s own. It’s a formula for living often repeated here, in this blog about doing all of these things. My daily reminder to not waste a second on the trivial, shared with those who wish to go along for the ride.

      The thing is, when we read the stoics, when we immerse ourselves in poetry and philosophy, in nature and travel, and most of all in the audacious act of heightened awareness, we too begin to live. Less of our own time is wasted. We become hungry for more and more experience, with a burning desire to share it with all who will listen and see for themselves. By opening the senses we let the magic in.

      “Ignorance is not bliss; it’s a missed opportunity.“ — Adam Nicolson, Sea Room

      There’s a price for ignorance paid in unfulfilled wonder and delight. There’s so much to do still. So much to admire. Like that of a poet no longer with us, it’s a whisper (or a shout) to make now count. We’re just part of the choir, singing our part, reminding the congregation to dance with the miracle of life with all the enthusiasm we can muster.

    • A December Dark

      We grow accustomed to the Dark –
      When light is put away –
      As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
      To witness her Goodbye –

      A Moment – We uncertain step
      For newness of the night –
      Then – fit our Vision to the Dark –
      And meet the Road – erect –

      And so of larger – Darknesses –
      Those Evenings of the Brain –
      When not a Moon disclose a sign –
      Or Star – come out – within –

      The Bravest – grope a little –
      And sometimes hit a Tree
      Directly in the Forehead –
      But as they learn to see –

      Either the Darkness alters –
      Or something in the sight
      Adjusts itself to Midnight –
      And Life steps almost straight.
      — Emily Dickinson

      On Emily Dickinson’s birthday a poem about darkness, or rather, about becoming accustomed to the darkness as we step deeper into it. We might call this night vision, or depression, or we might call it becoming jaded. It all depends on the type of darkness we step into.

      Moonless, rainy nights naturally tend to be amongst the darkest. Place that night into December and you’ve added raw. By all accounts raw, dark and rainy ought to be miserable. Surely nobody would choose it for pleasure optimization, and yet it has it’s own pleasures when we dress for it, or shelter from it in the comfort of a nest. But these are forms of mitigation. The conditions remain.

      Amor fati.

      The thing is, we can step into the darkness and learn to thrive in it. That doesn’t make us a part of the darkness, merely adaptive. That’s a healthy condition in a lifetime filled with rawness, filled with darkness. We adapt and learn to thrive once again. Eventually the rains end, the sun rises, and the days will warm. Count on it. But tread with care until then.

    • So Apart We’ve Grown

      One of these days
      I’m gonna sit down and write a long letter
      To all the good friends I’ve known
      And I’m gonna try
      And thank them all for the good times together
      Though so apart we’ve grown
      — Neil Young, One of These Days

      Talking to an old friend, we asked each other about other old friends. Who have we seen? Who has drifted away? How are the kids? It was a reminder of the person I used to be who danced with the world in the best way he could at the time. We’ve grown so far apart since then. Yet we’re still the same in so many ways.

      The thing is we’re all becoming something more as the layers pile on. Those layers either smother who we once were or keep that person warm for the day when we fling off the years and dance like it’s 1999 again. Like a tree, those growth rings differ year-to-year. Some years are better than others, some are distinctly harder. We reach for the sun in good times and bad and put the seasons behind us, until one day we look around and wonder where the time went.

      One of these days, we’ll all get together again. We won’t miss a beat, I expect, just as we didn’t miss a beat last time. Somewhere deep inside us is the person we were then, thrilled to come out and play the part once again. Sure we’re all so very different as life rolls along and sometimes over us all. But there’s a spark of energy between old friends that remains to rekindle the flames of our youth. A time before mortgages and divorces and funerals for people we thought would be here with us now, in this very conversation, talking about who we were then.

      Those conversations change as we grow, from who we want to be when we grow up to who we want to be now that the kids have grown up. That’s a lot of growth to catch up on some day when we get back together with those old friends. Now is just another growth ring we’ll laugh about (perhaps someday). We all know that the future is coming for us soon enough. But those growth rings make their own music. And we have so very much to catch up on.

    • Stepping Out of the Fog

      It’s a cool, damp and foggy morning in New Hampshire. The biting cold of the last few days now but a memory. Surely, the seasons are upside down nowadays, for all the reasons we already know. The lichen seem to appreciate the continuation of our soggy 2023 into December. It’s been a nonstop party for them. And what are we to do but dress appropriately and get out into it ourselves?

      Appropriate dress this time of year includes bright orange clothing. December 3rd is the last day of hunting season for those using firearms, and December 15th for those with crossbows. I don’t know these dates because I’m a hunter myself, but because I like to exit the forests as intact as I was when I entered them. One must be aware of the risk of wandering in the woods and dress appropriately to mitigate that risk. Or simply wait until hunting season is over—but what’s the fun in that? That’s like waiting for the rain to stop, which is exactly why my summit hiking has stalled indefinitely.

      The thing is, I was going to write about determinism and indeterminism today, but the woods seemed a better place to carry my mind. The world is either set in motion already or we have a chance to change the game by the choices we make. Most people believe the latter but how many actually take the leap? We aren’t just souls lost in the fog, rooted where we landed once upon a time. We have a real chance at changing the game. Is there luck in that landing? Of course there is, and perhaps that’s determinism set in motion, but it ignores the motion itself. We aren’t trees rooted in a foggy forest, we’re each walking through the wilderness in search of something more. Eventually the fog lifts and we might just find our way out.

    • Earning the Warmth

      Through the window
      we could see how far away it was to the gates of April.
      Let the fire now
      put on its red hat
      and sing to us.
      — Mary Oliver, November

      November comes to an end, and just like that, December is at our doorstep. The ambient light of incandescent and LED bulbs make total darkness an impossibility in most cities and suburbia now. The decorations of Christmas have exploded onto the scene, to grow exponentially over the coming weeks. When we get beyond the constant advertisements for last-chance(!) savings on gifts from every retailer on the planet, we’re left with short, crisp days and long, cold nights.

      Some of us thrive in the cold. We have layers upon layers at the ready, lightly dusted from months of being ignored but feeling just right when we slip them on once again. The stakes are driven into the edges of pavement, awaiting their role as traffic cops or road kill for errant plow drivers. Snow? It’s nothing but a possibility for most of us. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll see snow soon enough. The thrill of the crunch! The hiding of all the brown landscape in a crystal blanket. Snow would make it feel like December has arrived. If not, well, we must seek it out in higher elevations as the hikers and skiers do.

      If November is a time for thankfulness and gatherings (and beards and hastily-written first drafts), December is a time for giving and hustling to find the perfect gift for someone before we give up and give them a gift card to use in seven months when they stumble upon it in the drawer dedicated to such plastic tokens of love. We want to celebrate our love for someone with the perfect gift, and somehow it ends up feeling like a concession to just give them the money. My feeling on such things is that the person who gave the card should be a part of the experience of using the card. Experiences are always best shared with those who wish it for you.

      I’m seeking more poetry in my long nights. More warming fires with conversation and a pet snuggled up close. More time reading the books that evaded me in sunshine. More cold walks around the block with a dog that’s come to expect something new on every stroll. We learn what we are unaware of from a dog on a night walk. I’d forgotten the thrill of the sky changing from step to step, the pull of the leash as the dog sees a rabbit, and the sounds of coyotes, fox and fisher cats crying in the night. I’d forgotten the welcoming warmth of that first step into the kitchen after a brisk walk telling me; “Welcome back”. Indeed.

      The days are still getting shorter for a few more weeks. We must embrace the long, cold nights for all that is hidden in them. For we are alive, and nothing makes you feel that like getting out into it, even for a little while. It’s easy to be warm in the tropics. Up north we must earn it. And in the work we find we love it all the more.

    • Loss and Gain

      Your absence has gone through me
      Like thread through a needle.
      Everything I do is stitched with its color.”
      ― W.S. Merwin, Separation

      Stick season brings a different kind of light with it. Trees stand like soldiers, marching across landscapes, over hills and deep into valleys. Without the cover of leaves, we see things otherwise obscured. The early morning sun reaches deeply across this bare landscape, shining into corners it could never reach in warmer months. Like the trees, we come to see more of the world when something otherwise essential is no longer with us. We sense the loss, yet we survive and carry on for another season.

      We approach the holidays aware of who we’re missing. We make lists of who will be with us for Thanksgiving, and with the list we are reminded of who won’t be there. The puppy, who’s grown so very big in so little time, would have melted under the influence of a certain Navy pilot who could whisper mischievous things to any dog and win them over (come to think of it, he was adept at this with humans too). My own interactions with the pup are heavily influenced by observing his dog whispers once upon a time.

      How do we react to a world that is filled with the starkness of loss? How do we live in a world that at times feels darker by the day? A world that feels colder than it once did when things seemed more hopeful and joyous?

      We ought to remember the trees of stick season, bare and sullen in November, but one day budding into fullness once again. Reminding us that this too shall pass. All those bare trees announce something else in their nakedness. They remain linked to each other—roots entwined through the darkness and cold, supporting the whole until warmer days return again. Returning to that Thanksgiving list, I see the names of all of those who will be with us this year and I’m grateful for the abundance of character (and characters) in my life. It’s a reminder that this remains a favorite season of the year, for the warmth and light and color each of us brings to the tapestry.

    • Stillness and the Swirl

      When despair for the world grows in me
      and I wake in the night at the least sound
      in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
      I go and lie down where the wood drake
      rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
      I come into the peace of wild things
      who do not tax their lives with forethought
      of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
      And I feel above me the day-blind stars
      waiting with their light. For a time
      I rest in the grace of the world, and am free

      — Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things

      Manhattan enthralls. Manhattan is a jumble of ideas all shouting to be heard. Like the world jammed into an island could be expected to behave, there is a jostling for the top. Skyscrapers reaching higher, with more and more flair, like the people who occupy them. Manhattan demands the best we can muster of ourselves. Many fall far short of this, to be sure, but the demand is there for those who will listen.

      I’m usually good for two days of this, three tops, before I crave stillness again. The delight of sitting on the deck stairs with the pup curled up for an ear scratch and stubborn oak leaves drifting to earth. The call of simple stillness drowns out the noise of the streets, drowns out the madness in the world, drowns out the voice inside me that wants more of the bustle and hum of a city anticipating parades and Christmas lights in the weeks to come. This magic is borrowed, not mine to keep.

      The line between chaos and order is thin and tricky to find balance on as we make our way through a lifetime. A bit of poetry on one side, a dance with titans and hustlers on the other. We stumble and right ourselves, lean this way and that, breath deeply and step forward again. Hoping angry winds don’t blow us into chaos. Hoping whispers of doubt don’t betray us. Hoping we can carry on in the darkness beyond our control. We only control the next step.

      New York demands attention. Sirens and horns and the rumble of constant change a soundtrack penetrating my soul. The news of the world is dire. Seemingly darker by the day. How do we find peace despite it all? We ought to remind ourselves that the universe is bigger than the schemes of humanity. We ought to reverently walk in the woods. We ought to be grateful for the quiet familiarity of home even as we race through a city that never sleeps. Even the swirling leaves from a stubborn oak ground themselves eventually.