Winter is Coming
The fog is thick this morning, surrounding us in a soft blanket of grey, creeping close and closer still, cloaking the shrubs, disguising the gardens. The fog horn has blown all night long at intervals as regular as breath. In and out, in and out, in and out. I sync my breathing, pull up the quilt again, and soon return to my dreams.
I always look forward to the horn in the night, as it predicts the following day will begin with cozy quiet.
A hike in the fog is a mystery walk. Who knows what’s around the next bend? It alerts the senses to each snap of a twig, each rustle of wings leaving the brush, each croaky caw of the raven high in the top of a fir.
Winter is coming.
Fog on water. Clean. Fresh as laundry on the line.
Fog will soon become rain. Batten down the hatches.
Except, no need to batten down hatches or shutter the windows. No wind is on the horizon.
I’m reading Ahab’s Wife—which must be the source of my windy thoughts. A nautical read—especially of an earlier century—always makes me think of cobblestone streets and scrimshaw from Nantucket town to Lahaina. Like Ahab’s wife, I would have made a fine New England whaler’s wife, I think, watching from the rooftop walk if I couldn’t be at sea. If I couldn’t climb the rigging in search of a whale’s spouting, I’d be stitching a cross-stitch sampler and minding the gardens before minding the hearth fires that follow. I would have plenty of time to write.
Winter is coming.
Winter is a writer’s blank canvas, as white as the snow, as empty as a new journal page.
Music shifts from blues to classical. And lots of musing.
Winter is coming.
I hear a flock of geese going by. Right this minute. There’s an osprey still occupying the nest down the road, but not for long.
Winter is coming.
I doubt that I could live where there is no change of seasons.
How else would I receive reminders to begin again?
How else to embrace the changes that are inevitable?
Kneel, dig, pull, gather. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Bonemeal, Potash. Rake. Mulch. Water. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Dump wheelbarrow.
