The Fourth Season
The temperature is in the single digits and the recently dusted snow is smooth and even all around us. The wood stove is hot. The cats are hunkered down. The giant spruces that surround our home are frosted and stoic. The suet and seed and corn are out for the taking. The feeders are full of the song birds that stay here the year round. Holiday plans are made, supplies are stockpiled and the Christmas lights are on in town. It must be winter.
I love these days when we’re not quite used to the notion that the fourth season is pulling into the station. The snow seems new; “Did we have much snow last year?” The deep freeze is unthreatening; “Well at least it won’t get much colder than this!” The cord wood is stacked deep and there’s lots more for the taking in the nearby woods. And soon, these very short days will start getting longer.
I have been paying attention to that last idea for as long as I can remember.
I am a daytime guy. I like the daylight. The night has never appealed to me, except for sleeping. I notice, on June 23rd, that the days are getting shorter and around Thanksgiving I start marking them off one by one, until the Solstice, when we start climbing out the other side night time. I have a friend who raises sheep and she shares my pension for daylight and counting. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one.
I have often said that if I were wealthy I would own a place in each hemisphere, north and south, so that I could have long days and short nights the year round. I would not like to live near the Equator where days are always twelve hours and the nights are the same. Nope, I want to see things. If I drive cross country it’s to see things, not to get to the other side. Everything is interesting, even Oklahoma, but I have to see it to enjoy it, right? And to see all those sights it has to be daylight. Headlights don’t cut it. Driving at night is like being in a mine shaft with your hat turned on. No thanks. Didn’t like it when I was twelve and I don’t like it now…when I’m not twelve.
When last I checked, I am not wealthy. There is no trust fund. So, I don’t have a place in each hemisphere. We have one home and one home only. The good news, the incredibly wonderful, lucky me, good news, is that our one home is here! Here in the incomparable Driftless. Here in nature’s showplace where the land and the sky and the critters and the plants are just so splendid that a daytime guy like me can find happiness. No, not just happiness, actual blissitude. I put up with a long winter full of slowpoke nights and jackrabbit days because what we are surrounded with is just so wonderful. Breathtaking, really.
Take this day for instance. Yesterday it was gray and a light snow blew around a bit, in swirls and fits. Today has bloomed into a day that is bluer than blue, Santa Fe blue, Mount Shasta blue. It is really cold outside but as I walk I need to open my coat, need to push my hat back, need to smile that big, dopey smile which is worn by the delirious and the incompetent. Whether it’s caused by barometric pressure or the shared joy that birds sing about on theses days, it doesn’t matter. I know what it feels like and it feels simply marvelous!
Yes, this winter onset has me beguiled. One would think that, after so many of them, one would get used to it. I mean how many seasons can a man witness before they get to be repetitive? How many times can blue sky and snowy ground and birds’ song fill one’s senses before you feel like you’ve seen this movie before?
Oh, but it’s not a film is it? It’s not TV and it’s not my favorite website. This is the real deal isn’t it? The real world, that is to say nature, is new every day, every season and every life. It hasn’t happened before, not just like this, not at this very moment when one of us is watching.
This minute, right now, is the first one like it, ever. The first full moon, the first blue sky the first winter of my life.
Ed Holahan Bio:
I was born in New York City in October of 1949. I am writing this sitting in Northern California in October of 2011. In between those dates a lot has happened, almost all of it really good.
My life has involved, in no particular order, playing the accordion, playing third base, organizing students, marrying twice; this time forever, goldsmithing, cab driving, selling model trains, keynote speaking, inventing toys and games, filming animation, writing true facts, writing made up facts, selling expensive men’s clothing (two days), farming, running creativity workshops and doing radio shows. That is a partial list. For the complete Opus d’Ed you’ll have to wait for the DVD which is due out any time now.
I live here because this place is beautiful and because you, the residents hereof, are beautiful too. So beautiful in fact that I spend a good part of every day with a silly grin on my face wondering how in holy blazes I got so lucky.
I hope in time to have each and every one of you as our guest on the Radio. Please watch your mail and your Social Pages for the invitation.