Friday Ramble, First of the Year

The Winter Solstice came and went, and light is slowly returning to the world. Northern days are growing longer, but the effects of December's turning are felt in their own good time, and it will be a while before we sense real change.

In January, it is tempting to remain indoors and curl up in the warm with a mug of tea and a book, but Beau and I need to be out in the woods now and again, however short our stay on cold days. Rambles nourish and sustain us, and there is always something to see when we are out and about. I carry a walking stick for treacherous areas on the trail, a camera (sometimes just my cell phone), a notebook and pen, a flask of tea and Beau's biscuits.  There is always a pocket full of seed for the birds and a few apples for other woodland creatures. All in all, it's a fair bit of weight to carry, but we are used to doing it, and we don't think of the stuff we are carrying as a burden.

"Crunch, crunch, crunch" went our mukluks a few days ago as we made our way along the trail. It was surely our imagination this early in the year, but the snow seemed brighter than it had been a few days ago. Sunlight sparked through the trees, and everything glittered. The light was sublime. We felt as if every jeweler's vault on the planet had been looted and the glittering contents spilled out at our feet.

There was flickering movement in woodland alcoves and hollows; shadows shifted and rippled and flowed like water as squalls gusted through the bare, whiskery trees. The shadows seemed deeper and more intense, more blue.  Here and there, a sprig of frozen evergreen poked out of the snow, and the color was a hopeful thing, one that not even the biting north wind could carry away in its gelid paws. I always wonder why there are not more words in the English language for such blustery air currents.

Resolutions this year??? In this year of plague, uncertainty and sequestering, my heart is not in making resolutions, and there won't be any lofty aspirations scrawled on paper or etched in stone this time around.  There will be just the same old work in progress, Beau and I lurching onward together, breathing in and out, in and out, in and out. That will have to be enough, and we are OK with that.

In the words of Osaka Koryu, when we breathe in, we will breathe in the whole universe. When we breathe out, we will breathe out the whole universe. We will  go along together, paw in paw, and we will simply keep putting one foot in front of the other. As always on our walks, we will talk with the great trees and look for the light.