Schizophrenic

Driving to work in twilight at 3:30 in the afternoon, the sun just a sliver of reddish gold on the southwestern horizon. Fresh new snow, finally enough now, makes the country look so clean. It fell deep enough at the house to be able to do something at last.

Four weeks ago the temperature was in single digits and below. Three weeks ago we had about an inch on the ground, That was until the rain and ice storm came making everything so treacherous. I remember thinking one night as I was pussyfooting the car along the treacherous icy road that I hadn’t seen a moose along the roadside in the area close to the house in about a year

Then it went back into the single digits again until the day before yesterday when the temperature went up to 40. Along with the higher temperatures came howling winds. 

The sky threatened darkly all day but it wasn’t until late in the evening that the snow started. For a while in the wind it blew horizontally past the house plastering the east sides of things, trees, cars, house then the winds settled down. Overnight about six or eight inches fell and in the morning a blanket covered the ground, untracked except for one trail where a dog had passed through the yard at some time during the early part of the day.

Time passed into the inevitable necessity to get ready for work. A bit later, showered and dressed I looked out that front window again and now there was another track diagonally across the yard from back to front and into the trees near the road. In the 15 or 20 minutes I was getting ready, a moose had walked through the yard.

And today? First time this year to blow dry the driveway. It’s been strange. Most years I have embraced winter but this year it took forever to accept that winter is coming and oddly I finally did the day before this snow. A week ago I had traded summer for winter machines and started the snowblower, but this past week got plastic on the windows, water taken care of, some kindling for the wood stove split and extension cords out for the vehicles. And then it snowed, And then a moose walked through the yard. And I realized on the drive in twilight it’s only a little more than two weeks until the solstice which will mean I have made it through the dark days 37 times now. It only gets brighter after that.