Blog Your Blessings: Winter?

I love winter. Everything about it: the slow-to-go dark of the mornings, the biting cold, the ripping wind, the bright sunlight, the clear skies, the snow that insulates the world from every sound and wraps it in peace and stillness for a few months.
The January thaw whipped all of that away this week, though. In fact, it got a little carried away with itself, reaching temperatures in the upper 50s and evaporating every last drop of snow and dissolving the ice on the nearby pond. By Wednesday, the only thing winter had left to call her own was the name January.

The thaw startled me out of the peace and quiet of winter and reminded me that things change fast and change again. The same kids who were eager to skate and had tossed rocks onto the pond's ice cover a week ago will be out in their canoes before long. The fishermen who had passed their weekends sitting in huts in the middle of the pond will be leaning on the trees and fishing as lazily from the shore. The heron, the turtles, the geese, and the beaver will wake up and come home and get back to work.

While I was out for a walk one warm day last week, I thought I heard the voices of the boys of last summer on the breeze. One sunny morning, a bunch of boys had been out in canoes. They went ashore when one boy noticed that his craft carried a stowaway: a field mouse who had not paid his fare.

These boys--actually, substantial young men-- had jumped out of their canoe and shouted to the other boys for help. What do we do now? they cried. There's a mouse! They were too stunned by the intrusion of this little mammal brother into their world to do the obvious: go ashore, tip the canoe, and let the little guy out.

The moment was as funny as it was innocent.

The time changes, and times change. But time also returns to itself. Predictably. Winter will return. And that is a blessing.

Blog Your Blessings