Dec. 31
” – covid-19 is out there and we need to continue with the sticks and stones of masks and isolation to keep it at bay. ” mumma yaga, 201231 A year ago… **
This is the upper pond, running, though it’s shallow.
There are only a few hours left. I listen to a new year’s eve playlist from 2019. “It’s been so long you’ve been wanting a cabin and a back-woods trail” *
Today it is above zero and everything is melting. Great avalanches fall from the roof with a cloudy thump, but most of the water evaporates directly into a mist that rises along the ridges, like smoke.
Up the camp road where beech leaves wait for the later winds.
Blackie came out to see me as I neared his house.
I walked across from the camp road to climb up through the brambles.
Blackie got there ahead of me.
The trees that border on the meadow stretch out their arms to catch the sun, and the snow. This great white pine is the dominant tree on the meadow.
Green appears wherever the snow has retreated.
The cow pond frozen, still. It has a little almost-island, which in summer is all stones and moss held together by the tree-roots and reeds.
It has been a blurry, crazy year. Make that two crazy years. A path through the brambles. The brambles parted, though they were daunting from a distance, as each step, taken one at a time, brought me to a new opening. That’s what life feels like just now. Brambles. But there is a way through, though we can’t see it. The path will reveal itself as we walk.
mumma yaga
* Ferron, Ain’t Life a Brook, 1981
** https://mummayaga.blogspot.com/2020/12/201231-old-year-new-year-and-fig-news.html