The Silvered December Moon
Venus and Jupiter and the silvered Moon rise low on the horizon. The winter air is bitter cold. So cold that the nose and toes ache and standing still is a silly thing to do. Yet this is a Texas December, not Toronto cold, not even frost, nor lake effect snow piling pile upon pile, just cold assaulting blood thinned by too many hot Texas days. I would rather see my breath frosting in cold air, and hear my footsteps crunching dry snow across a tree hemmed field in knee deep snow, and hot cider, and clean fresh air. There have been other snowy nights long ago in that northern city on the edge of the frozen lake; the snow shawling down out of the sky like a great blanket covering the streets, the parked cars, the sidewalks; covering all the dust and dirt of the city, white now at least for a day or two. A silent hush falls over the city, even the passage of the occasional car slipping and sliding through deeply rutted tracks in middle of the streets is muffled. Snow swirls around the lights glittering like miniature falling gemstones. There is not only silence, but freshness in the air, clean, cold, invigorating, so chilled that one wraps a scarf around the face to soften the harshness of each breath. We climb the step to our third floor apartment stamping snow off our feet on each of the lower steps. Not only boots are frosted, even the socks are covered with crystalline ice. Once into our apartment, shoes and socks will be left just inside the door. Now, warm slippered, we look down from our window at the white world beneath and snow falling snow on snow. But in the middle of the night throughout the centre city where we live we hear the sound of snowploughs. Not only the streets are ploughed, but even the sidewalks. The snow is carted off leaving only a frozen icy residue, but even that is not safe from the predatory trucks spreading salt before the morning rush hour.
Artistry
A fine hand and a precise eye had been at work. Every blade of grass, every branch, every pine needle, every twig was silvered with a fine coat of ice; walk ways and paths all silver in the early morning light. The field behind the houses, fence posts and wire fencing, bull rushes in low marshy areas, all had been silvered overnight with this exquisite touch of the Master’s hand, and beyond the silver fields, the smooth silver highway arched over the silver hill and disappeared beneath the silver trees. But each touch of silver was in subtle shades drawn up from the underlying colour of the roads, the trees, the branches, the twigs, and the grasses of the fields. Silvered black macadam, silver browns and greens in a myriad of silver hues unmatched by mere mortal mimicry. Slowly as the temperature rose throughout the morning the underlying colours began to deepen ‘till all the silver has vanished to appear on some other silvered morn.
Ice
We wrapped up warm against the cold, warm coats, woollen scarves and woollen mittens, and our heads woollen tooks; those knitted Canadian stocking caps. Our newly sharpened skates we laced together and hung over our shoulders as we trudged across the frozen earth down to the frozen lake. It was early December and the snow had fallen lightly in dry flakes that the wind blew easily away from the frozen surface of the lake reminiscent of a scene from Dante’s Inferno, “At this I turned and saw in front of me,/beneath my feet, a lake that frozen fast,/had lost the look of water and seemed glass.” We stepped out upon the surface gliding smoothly over the surface seeing below the rocky bottom sloping away towards the deepening centre of the lake. In the frozen beauty of a Canadian winter day, in glorious motion, we glided over a still dead world, a hell of cold beneath our feet, and the joy of youth in our hearts.
[1] Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. Allen Mandelbaum, (New York:Everyman’s Library, 1995), Inferno, Canto XXXII, 22-24
The Storm in Rochester
The Precincts are never particularly well lighted ; but the strong blasts of wind blowing out many of the lamps (in some instances shattering the frames too, and bringing the glass rattling to the ground), they are unusually dark to-night. The darkness is augmented and confused, by flying dust from the earth, dry twigs from the trees, and great ragged fragments from the rook’s nests up in the tower. The trees themselves so toss and creak, as this tangible part of the darkness madly whirls about, that they seem in peril of being torn out of the earth : while ever and again a crack, and a rushing fall, denote that some large branch has yielded to the storm.
No such power of wind has blown for many a winter night. Chimneys topple in the streets, and people hold to posts and corners, and to one another, to keep themselves upon their feet. The violent rushes abate not, but increase in frequency and fury until at midnight, when the streets are empty, the storm goes thundering along them, rattling at all the latches, and tearing at all the shutters, as if warning the people to get up and fly with it, rather than have the roofs brought down upon their brains.
1 Charles Dickens, Edwin Drood, (Chapman and Hall: London, 1891), p. 121, 122
Venus and Jupiter and the silvered Moon rise low on the horizon. The winter air is bitter cold. So cold that the nose and toes ache and standing still is a silly thing to do. Yet this is a Texas December, not Toronto cold, not even frost, nor lake effect snow piling pile upon pile, just cold assaulting blood thinned by too many hot Texas days. I would rather see my breath frosting in cold air, and hear my footsteps crunching dry snow across a tree hemmed field in knee deep snow, and hot cider, and clean fresh air. There have been other snowy nights long ago in that northern city on the edge of the frozen lake; the snow shawling down out of the sky like a great blanket covering the streets, the parked cars, the sidewalks; covering all the dust and dirt of the city, white now at least for a day or two. A silent hush falls over the city, even the passage of the occasional car slipping and sliding through deeply rutted tracks in middle of the streets is muffled. Snow swirls around the lights glittering like miniature falling gemstones. There is not only silence, but freshness in the air, clean, cold, invigorating, so chilled that one wraps a scarf around the face to soften the harshness of each breath. We climb the step to our third floor apartment stamping snow off our feet on each of the lower steps. Not only boots are frosted, even the socks are covered with crystalline ice. Once into our apartment, shoes and socks will be left just inside the door. Now, warm slippered, we look down from our window at the white world beneath and snow falling snow on snow. But in the middle of the night throughout the centre city where we live we hear the sound of snowploughs. Not only the streets are ploughed, but even the sidewalks. The snow is carted off leaving only a frozen icy residue, but even that is not safe from the predatory trucks spreading salt before the morning rush hour.Artistry
A fine hand and a precise eye had been at work. Every blade of grass, every branch, every pine needle, every twig was silvered with a fine coat of ice; walk ways and paths all silver in the early morning light. The field behind the houses, fence posts and wire fencing, bull rushes in low marshy areas, all had been silvered overnight with this exquisite touch of the Master’s hand, and beyond the silver fields, the smooth silver highway arched over the silver hill and disappeared beneath the silver trees. But each touch of silver was in subtle shades drawn up from the underlying colour of the roads, the trees, the branches, the twigs, and the grasses of the fields. Silvered black macadam, silver browns and greens in a myriad of silver hues unmatched by mere mortal mimicry. Slowly as the temperature rose throughout the morning the underlying colours began to deepen ‘till all the silver has vanished to appear on some other silvered morn.Ice
We wrapped up warm against the cold, warm coats, woollen scarves and woollen mittens, and our heads woollen tooks; those knitted Canadian stocking caps. Our newly sharpened skates we laced together and hung over our shoulders as we trudged across the frozen earth down to the frozen lake. It was early December and the snow had fallen lightly in dry flakes that the wind blew easily away from the frozen surface of the lake reminiscent of a scene from Dante’s Inferno, “At this I turned and saw in front of me,/beneath my feet, a lake that frozen fast,/had lost the look of water and seemed glass.” We stepped out upon the surface gliding smoothly over the surface seeing below the rocky bottom sloping away towards the deepening centre of the lake. In the frozen beauty of a Canadian winter day, in glorious motion, we glided over a still dead world, a hell of cold beneath our feet, and the joy of youth in our hearts.[1] Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. Allen Mandelbaum, (New York:Everyman’s Library, 1995), Inferno, Canto XXXII, 22-24
The Storm in Rochester
The Precincts are never particularly well lighted ; but the strong blasts of wind blowing out many of the lamps (in some instances shattering the frames too, and bringing the glass rattling to the ground), they are unusually dark to-night. The darkness is augmented and confused, by flying dust from the earth, dry twigs from the trees, and great ragged fragments from the rook’s nests up in the tower. The trees themselves so toss and creak, as this tangible part of the darkness madly whirls about, that they seem in peril of being torn out of the earth : while ever and again a crack, and a rushing fall, denote that some large branch has yielded to the storm.No such power of wind has blown for many a winter night. Chimneys topple in the streets, and people hold to posts and corners, and to one another, to keep themselves upon their feet. The violent rushes abate not, but increase in frequency and fury until at midnight, when the streets are empty, the storm goes thundering along them, rattling at all the latches, and tearing at all the shutters, as if warning the people to get up and fly with it, rather than have the roofs brought down upon their brains.
1 Charles Dickens, Edwin Drood, (Chapman and Hall: London, 1891), p. 121, 122
Iced Ginger Beer
It’s late on a Sunday winter evening, the church activities are done, the car is packed and we have driven slowly up Route 1 towards our cottage on Great Neck. The snow along the route through Saugus is dirty brown, perhaps even black, but as we approach Ipswich the colour fades to white. We wend our way along the shore road skirting the marsh and turn up the road slipping in the snow and icy ruts toward our cottage. The snow is white, crusted, frozen and crunches beneath our feet as we go up the steps and cross the porch treading in deep snow. No one has been here since the last snow fall earlier in the week. The snow has drifted against the door and opening it takes a slow, steady, solid pull. The door leaves an arc on the snow like a windshield wiper on a frosted windshield. We keep the house barely above freezing and we can see our breath in the air. The picture window has a thick layer of ice. We stamp the snow from our boots. In the corner stands an old Franklin stove, next to it a pile of wood. Opening the door we scoop out the ash for use on the icy roads, build a fire and watch the hungry flames licking at the wood. While we wait for the heat to swell up in the small cottage we go to the kitchen and take two ginger beer from the fridge and stand by the window looking over the salt marsh and Plum Island, sipping the ice, ice cold ginger beer and allowing the tensions and labours of the past week to roll off shoulders. That moment, those very cold ginger beers shared with one I love; the snow on the marsh are indelibly impressed on my memory, even now forty years later sitting here in Texas, longing for a New England winter day.
No comments:
Post a Comment