Two nights ago, the clouds that had been dispensing a steady, quiet rain over the coast of Maine finally turned down the thermostat. The heavenly droplets transformed mid-fall into dense flakes of snow. We woke up on Saturday to a yard blanketed in a thin layer of pristine linen, reflecting every ray of sun, unmarred by footprints of even the tiniest woodland creature. After a slow day of reading and tending the wood stove, I finally hit my caffeine threshold, layered up, and walked out with the dog into this mystical landscape.
The forest trail, typically dense and shady, had been transformed into a bright and airy Candyland. Every bough, fern, and blade of grass was coated with thick, white frosting, and icicles hung from limbs like sugar crystals. Instead of its usual perfume of wet earth and decomposing leaves, the scent upon the air was sharp, almost metallic, as if the snow had carried with it a whiff of ozone in its atmospheric descent. My two feet and the hound’s four crunched out in staccato rhythm on the ice-heaved mud. The sun warmed the treetops, and when we paused to rest in a quiet pool of light, I could hear each melting droplet tinkling down a more delicate tune on the frozen path.
After my lungs had drunk their fill of chilled oxygen and I could no longer keep my overstimulated sinuses from leaking through my nostrils, we turned back. The day began to slip into dusk, the bright whites fading to soft greys. The spruces, hemlocks, firs, and pines on either side formed a narrow aisle, their heads bowing under the weight of their diamond-encrusted crowns. Looking up I could see a river of pale blue sky flowing with swirls of coral and lavender, and I felt like a fish seeing the surface from beneath. The horsetail cirrus rippled above as I let the current carry me homeward, their hues deepening to mauve and violet by the time I reached the main road.
Just before crossing over into my driveway, the light of the great star we orbit sliced through a gap in the trunks and slammed into the back of my retina. Ninety-one million miles away, some atoms of hydrogen were fusing with helium, their union begetting explosive energy, which, after eight minutes and twenty seconds, reached me, my dog, and all of these trees. I know that the electromagnetic spectrum contains more wavelengths than I can perceive, but even this narrow band of visible light cutting through the atmosphere was enough to arrest my motion, holding me hypnotized. I watched until this hemisphere turned its back on that deep orange ball of burning gas, and then I did the same.
As I write this evening, a soft wind is moving through the mighty oaks next to my cabin. The branches shiver, shaking loose any remaining ice crystals that plink and skitter down the metal roof over my head. The windows might as well be drawn with black velvet curtains; it’s as though everything outside of our little oasis of warmth has ceased to exist. An ash log is burning in the stove, performing the final turn in its own atomic conversion from light and heat into living tree back to light and heat.
I don’t know that I have another 500 words in me tonight, so if you’re looking for a thousand plus, these pictures from my old life will have to suffice.