Cold Rain and Snow

Some of us - there is a name for it, I'm sure - awake in the fall, when the gunmetal November skies return, the cold rain falls, and an icy swirl forms on the insides of storm windows in the old farmhouse. The frost is on the pumpkin and the mud freezes into ruts.  The soft cushion of leaves turns to a stiff crunch underfoot, layered with a top frosting of first snowfall.  The woods quiet down, the helter-skelter of noisy summer heads south, and we are left with whatever sound rings true - the rush of a brook, the squeak and skid of strong oak limbs in an upsurge of wind, and the hoot of an owl calling out across the ridgelines.

There are times in these dark woods when you imagine that cities have never been built, that the era of humans has come and gone.  You notice the direction of the wind - a southerly blow means a change of weather - and you know just how much daylight is left after what weakly passes for the sun drops down below the western ridgeline.

At first, I thought that the winder woods were about nothing - an antidote to a world stuffed with everything.  The winter makes you work for it, makes you reach out and grab whatever truth is buried in the hills and swales.  Summer offers itself glibly, like some garishly suited hawker of entertainment.  The winter work is worth it for those who can sift through the stanzas of triple meaning, how a leaden sky offers release from quotidian burdens.

You think of disturbing the universe with a new thought.  Maybe all that has come before has no meaning, or perhaps there is no meaning at all.  The signs of human ignorance are everywhere; a dead fox decomposing into an upper pasture, bear tracks in soft snow, a great horned owl gliding silently through a thickly wooded hollow.  I sift through clues to observe what lies behind the dark curtain of forest.

I fall asleep, dreaming of November woods, with no fear of waking.  Let others drown in what might have been.

-Christopher Kimball