Iced in

Imbolg is coming, they say. And that reminder is a bit encouraging (though in the north, Imbolg is usually months away from spring).

And yes, it is true that the light rises each day now, minute by quiet minute.

A sense of day, though, can be buried under an entombing sense of frozenness and coldness. Deep snow. Stillness. Days of white-gray sky that hold us pinned to the ice, as we try to find our footing.

Waiting.  

I've had enough of resting, now I'm waiting.

In dim January, and February, and well into March, I must wait for the return of my main source of joy. 

Joy for me is: The wheel of the year, as it turns toward spring, summer, autumn and the winter solstice. 

Feeling the earth stirring around me. Breathing in air laden with precious moisture. Walking the land, hearing wind in the treetops. 

Listening to the liquid language of snowmelt, lapping lakes and trickling rivers. Finding names for wild plants and bird calls as I walk. Smelling the fragrance of sweet prairie grasses. Sun and shadows, mare's tail clouds.

Though winter scours my spirit every year, it can gift me moments of stunning beauty...like the night I glanced out to find a diamond snow fallen on the roof, silently sparkling with starry flashes of green, silver and blue under the light of a full moon. 

Other days, a quiet beauty flies on black crows' wings as they curve their elegant paths across the sky. 

Or the beautiful way a shadow-black oak catches the low-riding sun in its branches and holds it there, like a glowing orb of ice-pearl. 

Somewhere, in the wilder-lands, I know that the Great Horned Owl already has begun to nest. And the bald eagles by the great river will soon claim their territory and lay their eggs.

The great movement toward the vernal equinox has begun; as always, so quietly that it is easy to imagine that nothing is changing at all out there, in the snow; or here, in my longing for what is not.

I may tell myself nothing is changing, but it is. Already, I know what I would like to go toward (sometimes it takes months to figure that out). 

I wrote this list without needing to think: Warblers. Owls. Migration. Hawk Ridge Observatory. Dawn chorus. Dark sky. Milky Way. Writing in new forms. Tent camping. National wildlife refuges.  

More of what brings me joy — for our time is short, and what we love is vast. 

I wish you the same. 

The longest month

This is how the world outside my window looked this morning. 

I finally got geared-up for a run yesterday about ten minutes after the freezing rain started. Already the sidewalks were coated with a pebbled, opaque ice, treacherous for running. The middle of the street was mostly clear, due to the chemicals and wheels, so I ran there. But I'd only covered half a mile before even the asphalt iced over, so I turned around and walked home in slightly soggy defeat, flinching as the occasional ice pellet bounced off my face.  

Blessings of the snow came later in a whirl of pelting flakes, when I happened to catch sight of a Northern Harrier—a species of small hawk—perched on the fence outside the kitchen window. Maybe attracted by the small birds at my backyard feeder. Enchanted by her wild presence—the royal autumn plumage of rich, brown-and-white-and-black-speckled feathers, puffed up against the cold, and a burning yellow eye—I stared at her, murmuring praise all the while.

And since harriers have exceptional hearing, it could have been the faint sounds of my human words that sent her sweeping off toward the north, tilting against the swirling, white wind. (Am I the only one who finds it difficult to keep my praise and delight to myself when coming face-to-face with such wonders? Which reminds me of something Treebeard said in The Lord of the Rings: "Elves began it, of course, waking trees up and teaching them to speak and learn their tree talk; they always wished to talk to everything, the old Elves did.")

Now the pretty icing of snow has melted off the gingerbread cottage, the shoveling is done, and the harrier is off hunting mice by the light of the Wolf Moon. The longest month is almost over.