It came down through the night — the first snowfall this winter, and everything changed — the way the dogs ran across the yard barking at snow falling from the roof, the new blanket of white on messy piles of logs and rocks, making beauty. Winter boots came downstairs, sandals went up.
Skis and snow shovels arranged by the door; I gave the driveway a once-over to see if I remembered how. Sounds were muffled, whispering, interrupted only by the cry of a single crow flying overhead and the frightening roar of a snowplow.
The seasons orchestrate what tools we use here, the clothes we wear, the tires on our cars, and the chores of the day. Snow shovels, skis and roof rakes in December — garden shovels, leaf rakes and wheelbarrows in June. Our backs ache in the fall from stacking wood and in March from shoveling snow. In April, forget about trying to pull that little car out of the mud hole, for you will both disappear.
Hopefully, the bears are sleeping under a tip-up tree on Grannyhand Hill, and won’t smell the sunflower seeds in feeders, now hung around the porch. Chickadees, nuthatches, goldfinches, titmice, and one singing Carolina wren, who forgot to look at the species distribution map to see that his kin are farther south.
When I moved here 25 years ago, I noticed that people often lived vigorous lives up into their 90s. All that stacking wood and feeding the cows kept them fit, perhaps. But not only physically, there seems to be a cultural and intellectual fitness here that I love about this community.
One of my close friends is in her late 90s. Her vision and hearing are going, but she is an intellectual fireball. Our weekly discussions of literature (we are both poets waiting to be discovered), politics, and the state of the planet keep me challenged. I want to know what flowers she loves and if she believes in the afterlife; she is mourning the 8th billion human, worries about extremists, and teaches me about Russian literature. We both were born and raised in the Midwest and call each other Missouri girls, although after so many decades here, aside from stubbornness, there is not much Missouri left in either one of us. Mostly, we cuddle up on her couch and wonder about the world. She fears she has become a burden, but those of us who help her know that she is a gift.
As I prepare for winter, looking at my stack of unread books — some poetry, a new book on the cell, another on lungfish, one on geology, and another on spiders — I am grateful to be able to read, to be independent, and to still be out in the woods every day with the little brown dogs. I am grateful to live up north where the winters put the apple in our cheeks and give our muscles a workout. Mostly, I am grateful to live in a place where we still look after each other.