This cold, snowless day (in Tamworth, New Hampshire) marks the returning of what had been a fleeing sun. It it also the threshold for a less momentous change: a year’s hiatus for Nat’s Blog and the start of Green Mountain, a Trail Tenders Journal, one of my writing projects for the coming year. You won’t see too much of a change of imagery and rambling essay, but there is some.
Check it out: http://reyfriends.net/greenmountain/
During the last week I have heard snowplows scraping pavement on more than one occassion. This is not a Sandwich Mountain Farm sound. This is a Tamworth Village sound. While snow plows do pass by the Farm, the packed gravel of the Sandwich Notch Road rings differently, and because the Curious Gourds Studio is farther from the road, it is muted. Our home in the Village is on Main Street, close the road and close to other buildings. The sounds of passing plows are a regular contribution to winter dreams.
When a plow enters my dreams it almost wakes me. In this in-between place sound paints vibrant pictures and sends me along a trail of association. Previous plowings accumulate and layer in memory not so dissimilar from snowfall itself. A scene immediately rises in my mind: I see the plow pushing accumulated snow and headlights driving forward accumulated darkness. Hazard lights spin and spatter red and yellow in the midst of this moving bubble of light. This is what I see from what I hear, but If I crack my eyes I witness red and yellow revolve around my bedroom like frenetic planets, an accelerated celestial show for a sleepy sun. Falling snow obscures the form of this rushing envelop like interference in a poorly received analog television signal — “snow.” As quickly as the plow appears it disappears, and even I who am still curled up in bed and have closed my eyes again can “see” this movement through both increasing and diminishing sound and a very slight change in pitch, a rising and falling as the plow’s iron bow plays a Doppler fiddle tune on the single string of road. My ideal plow is always responding to a storm of some magnitude. In my mind, after the plow has passed, an imaginary morning comes with the world buried in snow. The plow can’t keep up, and while banks on either side of the road grow ever higher, the road itself is never free.
Morning very cold and a dark, clear sky presents a perfect moment for stargazing. I step outside the studio and immediately see Saturn shining brightly through the trees and east over Weatamo Ridge. The star Vega is also bright and clear over the Acteon Ridge to the north. The constellation Cassiopeia scribes its “W” across the sky to the east, and close by the the Twins, their heads the stars Castor and Polux, look back at me. The Charioteer also keeps watch nearby with its bright eye, the star Capella. Below, the twinkling-red Betelgeuse rests on Orion’s shoulder and is also a part of this cluster. I look above and to the North and there is Polaris, the North Star, wagged by Little Bear’s tail (or the Little Dipper’s handle, take your pick) nosing its way toward Big Bear, Ursa Major. Below the bears the star Regulus, which marks the the foot of the Lion, is bright and helps me make the fainter form the constellation.
I am not dressed for the cold — the temperaure hovers at zero Fahrenheit — so I return to the studio.
I awake in darkness, as has become my habit during these days that are the darkest. The light within this darkness comes from the stars and moon, of course, and I have been enjoying the familiar shapes of constellations, which also makes me recall nights stargazing with Hans Rey. The the pattern of stars remain the same, at least during our life spans. Nights of star watching accumulate in a bin of memory, returning us to moments that differ in temperature or clarity of sky; a moon comes and goes, waxes and wanes; with planets gyrating, comets flashing and asteroids sparking. But these are minor compared to the familiarity of the shapes that spin around the pole star.
Even these familiar friends can succumb to a more complete darkness as the stars and all thing celestial are hidden by clouds. This morning the clouds have parted and the sky clear. The world has also frozen up. There is talk of snow. So it has been for a few days now with only occasional meandering flakes in sight. When light finally does come this morning there is a steady flurry, but it is still only a tease of winter: the ground is dusted white, but there is no accumulation beyond this thin cover that lets tufted grass through and barely graces selected branches. The longest night, the darkest day, is nearly here; still we wait for winter.
Friday, 11-26
Morning. A broil of cold cloud clinging to the ridge between Jenning’s Peak and Sandwich Mountain slowly dissipates. Background clouds glow orange before cooling white. A sleety-snowy mix covers everything with an icy, white crust. A good day to burn the brush pile. Left too many years, the pile combined some new blueberry and apple pruning on the top with a heart of woody compost with layers and various stages in between. So, it’s been leaking carbon for a while, yesterday speeded up the process.
Saturday, 11-27
A little ice age takes hold in the night, freezing the water for ducks, chickens and goats, hard as quartz. Winter shows itself with squally snow (and squirrelly retreat). The layer of ice dusted with fine powder.
Sunday, 11-28
The day begins bright, warms and ends with iron-gray skies, but the night clears things up again. A sky full of stars as the day ends: to the west, Orion, moving north, the Twins, Big Dog, Little Dog, the Charioteer, Big Bear…
Monday, 11-29
Morning. Jupiter hangs in dark branches to the west. Mountains are shadows, ridges rimmed by soft blue that rises and graduates to gray-blue smoke, then night blue. Time passes, but Jupiter stays, its sky a soft purple. How many colors of blue can I see before sunrise? I anticipate day.
Yesterday the sky cleared and the night was great for stargazing, and so was early this morning. The last stars/planets/satellites visible: Vega to the north, over Bald Man’s Chin on the Acteon Ridge; Venus to the east, through the trees as seen from the Studio; Capella to the West with the moon close by. The moon is the last survivor as the sky blues over Acteon and pinks to the east.
The eeuenynge maad, ye seien, It shal be cleer, for the heuene is lijk to reed; and the morwe, To day tempest, for heuen shyneth heuy, or sorwful
— from Matthew XVI in the Wyclif Bible
Mist covers the fields and it’s another frost-free morning, though two days ago the frost was heavy and I broke through ice in the greenhouse water tank. This crisp weather was preceded by a stint of warm and sunny days. Yesterday was mitten weather, but today it is relatively warm again and despite the damp, uninsulated gloves will do for the morning chores. Back and forth, undecided. Autumn is the time of year when one is not sure exactly how cold or warm it should be. Winter must be cold and snowy (except for a single January thaw), summer warm and hopefully not too hot too often, spring both cool and warm with a frost or two before June. Never mind that weather never behaves so well in practice, that is how it should be, though climate change seems to be encouraging a more misbehavior… Autumn is between times, with summer on one side and winter on the other, and I am never sure whether (weather?) to expect summer warmth or winter bite. Then there is what we call Indian Summer, what can seem more of a trick on us than the January thaw that results in wet feet and swollen rivers but does not make us believe we are perhaps in some other season.
The word “blustery” explodes from my lips and rolls off my tongue this morning: “its blustery.” And warm for this time of year. The bright weather of a few days ago eventually gave way to a morning of torrential rain yesterday (delighting the ducks again), but relative warm continued. No frost this morning. Above the dark shape of the Acteon Ridge scudding steelblue clouds drive relentlessly east. A washed-out babyblue sky squeezes between these somber, marching clusters, a blue sky faded almost to white. Too many washings, maybe? Suddenly a touch of fire above Sandwich Mountain! Are my impatient clouds entering into a battle with the sun? As suddenly as it appeared the fiery pink vanishes leaving me to wonder the outcome. Time drags as I anxiously wait. Has sunrise ever taken so long? The in-between babyblue brightens. Perhaps it has not been through as many washings as I’d thought… Acteon Ridge looses its shadow character as it emerges with color and contour, eastside slopes splashed with sunlight, including Sachem Peak. Clouds gain dimension too, billowing white above gray undersides. The babyblue has matured as well, still youthful, but with a growing vibrance that suggests adolescence instead of infancy. Still no sun. I know its coming, all signs point to it. If there had been a cloudly combat, and the clouds had prevailed, this brightening could not be. Acteon is now bathed in light. All that’s left of the darkness are west slope shadows. Through trees, to the east, just above Mount Weetamo’s northern shoulder, a single cloud burns white. Usually hidden from me as I write in the Studio, I can now see this ridge through a tangle of dark branches that have dropped their leaves. A solitary spruce, which will maintain the weight and density of its foliage through winter, stands behind the others, to the side, older, wiser, waiting with me. The clouds have scattered, but I now I see it, white and sending out sets of long, bright shards in the pattern of a compass rose (an artifact, I suddenly realize, of the screen behind the window, what was invisible to me a moment before). It’s now too much, a white-hot ball that has broken whatever glass globe held it, scattering more shards in a circular explosion. I can no longer look at it, even through the window, through the screen, through the trees. I look away and dark spots dart about in front my eyes and my head aches. It’s here, the sun.
I continue to rise earlier than the sun, and this has continued to afford me a chance for stargazing. The most recent nights (or early mornings) have provided a wonderfully clear sky. This morning is the exception as clouds move in after a few days of brilliant sunshine and warm weather. These have been days to enjoy time outdoors, whether edging the pastures — clearing trees and shrubs to stone walls — or walking in the woods. I take care to avoid looking too much like a deer now that it is hunting season. No white hankies dribbling from my back pocket.
A glance through the window shows light slowly draining into the landscape. The Acteon Ridge, only a silhouette, disappears into cloud cover as it reaches toward Sandwich Mountain. The earlier starless sky suggested clouds, and I can now see an overcast, gray ceiling. The continued flow of light is evident through the gradual emergence of color and definition: what seemed only the shadow of mountains becomes smudgy blue with feathered foreground trees. Birches and poplars, bare of leaves, reveal pale trunks and ever-so-slightly reddish limbs, while spruce, fir and pine stand resolutely dark, but also with emergent color, a deep green, a veiled green, like moss seen through layers of swift water in an inundated stream. Perhaps it isn’t light flowing into into the morning landscape, but darkness draining away after the flood of night.
It’s been a wet fall. Barn boots mandatory for the Curious Gourds environs. These last days of rain and near-rain have the kept the pattern up. Time to stick to hard-packed logging roads and stay away from the saturated trails: we need to give soils a break.
I begin writing in early morning dark as I resist both the sun’s arcing away to the south and the commandment to “turn back the clock.” As much as the steady decline of average temperature, it is the changing incline of the arc of the sun that reminds me that seasons take sharp turns here in New England.
The sky lightens (light comes) and lightens (night lifts its weight of darkness). On an apple tree bare of leaves (but with messy signs of bear beneath) golden apples persist like yellow stars in the tangle of dark branches. Rising mist in the Smarts Brook valley. At last some blue sky! The first sign of the rise of a firey sun is a touch of pink glow on Welch and Dickey Mountains.
Hours pass and a lingering rainbow brightens and dims and shifts for some of these hours. It is warmer now in the afternoon. The early promise of a sunny day gives way to persistent cloud cover and light, almost misting rain. It is warmer and I shed my jacket working in the barn.
