Feb. 1 was Imbolc, or Saint Brigid’s Day. It is the midway point between winter’s solstice and spring equinox—the first day of spring and lambing season if you live on a rainy island warmed by the north flowing Atlantic Gulf Stream— Ireland, where the buds on the hazels may start swelling and the ashes from the fireplace are swept out.
Not here, though, for in Vermont, where the polar vortex has found a home, we have a couple of months before the wood ashes go around our apple trees and the tiny red flowers on beaked hazelnuts growing along the river poke cautiously out. The woodstove still goes day and night, so the pipes don’t freeze.
Our bluebirds and song sparrows are down in Alabama, and the ground is still hard on top of daffodils. The earth is tilting towards the south now, so sun shines in the kitchen window, showing how dusty it is inside. Spring cleaning might be starting soon, if I don’t get distracted.
The sky — shades of cerulean and ultramarine is clear, clean, and cold with contrails pointing towards the city. Winter air is easy breathing. The snow has mostly been deep and light this winter. The grouse who burrow into soft powder for the night and the predators who dive after rodents are grateful for this, as am I, for I love to go skiing in these woods with my two little brown dogs nearby. The LBDs and I go where we should not be able to go, up into deep woods skiing around trees and over logs and boulders, for the snow cushions our path.
Returning home with ruddy cheeks, I make a coffee and give the dogs a cookie, because they were good some of the time. We cuddle onto the couch, and I read the news while they snore. It would be easy to think this an idyllic life and block out the rest, but like many of us who were beneficiaries or victims (not sure) of 16 years of Catholic Schools, I can’t let it go. We were gifted guilt— lots of it.
The only hopeful things that keep me from despair are the brown-robed monks who keep walking and teaching acceptance, and those strong-principled, cold-hearty protesters in Minneapolis who will not accept injustice. No matter how awful things get, there is usually something equally wonderful happening in response.
Newton’s third law states that every action is met with an equal and opposite reaction — we push backwards when walking forward, birds push downwards to fly up, salty popcorn makes us drink water. Life, it seems, seeks balance, never achieving it because we live in a dynamic universe, always slightly out of kilter, tilting north, then south, like the earth. We eat and breathe and drink, then die, giving everything back.
The kidnapping of little Liam in his bunny-eared hat was so egregious that the response became equally strong. Border patrol agents executed a gun-carrying ICU nurse, and even Ammon Bundy, of the grazing-rights militia standoff was angered enough to write an essay against the Federal Government.
We have a president who cares not for the constitution or rule of law, or rulings by the courts, but he does care about popularity. The only weapon we have now is to keep roaring — grandmas and preachers in prayer shawls, politicians and musicians and influencers. As cold and windy as it is, we must keep giving an equal and opposite reaction. Evil is nothing new in this world. How we push back is our story. Like Newton said.
Micki Colbeck is a naturalist and writer who chairs the Strafford Conservation Commission. mjcolbeck@gmail.com
