Friday Ramble - Last of the Year

It seems right to start the last ramble of the year with sunlight falling across a bend in the Clyde river in the Lanark Highlands. The river is a meandering "old age" tributary, and she curves through woodlands, valleys and farm fields, carving deep channels and loving every turn along the way. A wild spirit, a veritable crone among waterways, she resists freezing, crooning and muttering and grumbling on her journey south to merge with the Mississippi in Bathurst township.

In winter, I find a sheltered perch on the bank and listen to the river as she sings underneath the ice.  Sometimes, she seems to be performing a duet with the wind, and there's a kind of Zen counterpoint at work, two unbridled entities utterly independent in their contours and rhythm, but meticulously interwoven and seamless in their harmonies.  Putting all notions of complex orchestration and conventional choreography aside, there's lovely music in the air on icy winter days. The sound of moving water has always been a leitmotif for me, and I often think that my existence can be measured in rivers, currents and intermittent streams rather than cocktails, jewelry, pairs of shoes and coffee spoons.

This is the right place to stand on the trailing edge of the calendar year. In springtime, I watched as willows on the farther shore leafed out and turned silvery green, then looked on a few weeks later as the river overflowed her banks and asserted her claim to the fertile fields on both sides.  In summer, I counted bales of hay and captured images of deer and wild turkeys feeding at dusk.  In autumn, I watched the sun go down over the same willows, so golden of leaf and limb that they seemed to be made of spun out of sunlight.  In the now, snow frosts every tree and branch, and the light shining through them dazzles my eyes.

This is where I came with Spencer to collect my thoughts when my husband (now in remission) was diagnosed with cancer some time ago, then after my own diagnosis last year.  It is where I came to replenish the energies and inner directives needed to get through big life stuff like chemo and radiation. It is where I came when my beloved friend Penny passed away last February, again when we put Spencer to sleep in June after osteosarcoma rampaged through his dear little metabolism like wildfire. Sometimes, we think we are unraveling, but the Clyde always works her magic, and she knits us back together again. With Himself and Spencer's baby brother Beau and the river on my side, I will get through.

Thank you for coming along on Friday rambles this year. May we share many more rambles in the shiny new year that is waiting for us around the bend.