Home Fires
At the topmost branches of a 60’ cottonwood tree on the edge of the woods, three leaves hang unmoving and resolute, curled into brittle brown fists. Everywhere else, the blue beech, black walnut, horse chestnut, buckeye, sassafras and red cedars stand bravely naked and ready for whatever will come. In the next four months we’ll get to look behind nature’s curtain and see the architecture that supports our early days of spring planting, summers down by the creek looking for salamanders beneath the shade of the creek banks’ towering sycamores and those October leaf-gathering afternoons as the sun shifts its position on the western horizon. It’s not an easy gaze, this season of exposure. Winter lays bare the blueprint that supports us through each season. We will see things as they are, stripped almost clean of what was never intended to last anyway, and it reminds us of our own temporary residential status here.
From the far southeastern corner of the field, where we buried the remnants of the barn after the Great Fire of 2018, the view of the house is reassuring. I notice this on the morning walk when my sticks and I take the diagonal path to what we now know as the “graveyard” (we have a few of these self-named spots on the acreage, a two-or three-word phrase to tease the vast and layered story that each location holds). Its buttery yellow siding glows at dawn’s first light, a candle on the highest point our land offers, and we get to live inside it. From the lowest point in the meadow, down by the Old Man Tree where the creek straightens herself before elbowing around a stand of the most magnificently grapevine-draped black walnuts (we’re talking dark woods fairy tale grapevines, thick and full of years as they snake up from the soil), our home looks the epitome of sweet and pure country living in its presentation. Climbing the steep slope through the mouth of the meadow to the front porch makes me feel like I’ve just finished the last leg of a long journey from Somewhere. My destination is this golden lap, ready to gather me and my weary but sturdy bones into some mighty fine comfort (I have an almost unnatural love for our vintage-style metal lawn chairs as fold myself into one of them and sigh).
Even though I walk almost every day (making good on my promise “as often as I can, for as long as I can”) with little or no inner convincing to leave a warm house and step into the frozen air, I look forward to the season of tucking in and taking shelter from the brunt of the cold winds and chilly rains our sentinel trees will soon take in their rooted stride. Spending so much time indoors, surrounded by the cherished accoutrements of the life we’ve built within these walls, is equally gratifying. Yesterday, I sat for seven mostly uninterrupted and focused hours in the studio making miniature books and journals with a view out the south-facing window to the still-smoldering burn pile by the old goat barn. Stitching signatures and gluing up book board, how could I not remember that one kidding season where seven of our Boers each gave birth to twins in a span of 16 hours? An eighth doe had triplets, one of which Patrick had to intubate almost the minute it hit the straw-covered ground. My nephew Robbie, ten years old at the time and present for the birth and emergency goat first-aid, named it “Lucky” and added the phrase “barn words” to our family’s vocabulary after Patrick let loose with a few choice expletives during the more tense parts of Lucky’s rescue proceedings.
I think winter turns our heads in a gentle lookback direction, an over-the-shoulder lingering glance at memories now embellished and good-naturedly exaggerated. While we’re inside and the furnace is exhaling its warm breath on our toes, it’s as good a time as any to call up the legends we’re made of and read aloud the chapters we’ve written so far in the grand Book of Life. It passes the time and softens the edges of the darkness that swallows us whole from November to March, making us even more grateful for the incremental slivers of light that spread out each morning beginning the day after winter solstice. Sunny days will be sparse in the next few months (Ohio averages only 178 of them annually) so we’ll look to each other’s company for the brightness our hungry spirits crave (I won’t be disappointed; Patrick is such a wonderful companion). This wintertime lookback also reminds us of what we’ve pushed through, endured and survived, stronger and better for the hardship (bruised and scarred too, but scars mean something healed. Let’s not forget that). Looking today’s headlines in the eye, I welcome any and all evidence of my own ability to persevere. A trembling gut tells me I’m going to need it.
In the face of an unstoppable winter, it’s good and helpful to blow on the embers of the home fires that keep our souls pliable and elastic. Find your warmth, dear ones, keep a quilt nearby and listen to the echoes of your own stories.
Spring will come…spring will come.
