Clearing the Page..to Leave Fresh Footprints

As a child one of my favorite toys was the Etch-A-Sketch, that technological marvel that looked something like a primitive red iPad with two white knobs at the bottom.  The knobs directionally controlled some kind of an internal stylus that drew lines on the gray screen.  With careful and practiced maneuvering the aspiring artist could draw all kinds of shapes -- not only the straight lines superficially offered by the knobs, but faux-curves as well.  The possibilities seemed endless.  But the "magic" promised by the label at the top of the toy was that the entire image -- masterpieces as well as mistakes -- could be erased with a simple, vigorous shake.  The slate thusly and summarily cleaned, the aspiring artist was ready to begin afresh.

It's been a week since the blizzard blustered its way through central Iowa leaving white-faced trees and a foot-deep blanket of snow on the ground.  In the ensuing days the road crews have done the best they could to restore the county's mobility; power crews have reconnected downed lines, and after more than a year of anticipation I finally had the chance to put our own snow blower through its paces.  For folks like us the "White Christmas" was a sentimental treat, though travelers had some grumbles.  It has been beautiful, quieting in a way -- centering.

But the blanket has grown worn.  The landscape still looks white, but a closer gaze reveals the traffic.  Deer passing through every morning and evening have tracked the lawn into a herring-bone pattern of comings and goings; bare patches betray the hoof-thrashes in search of food.  A herd of nine were clustered around the garden yesterday morning; a handful again last night.   When Tir and I stepped out front this morning in the not-yet-gray of dawn we first heard the scuttle of feet and then the flip of the white tail of the deer we had disturbed beneath the trees.

The imprints of activity leave a beauty of their own -- the etches and sketches of life.  I think about all the lines and curves, the patterned foot prints and the worn patches we have left on this first year at Taproot Garden.  While considerable life had been lived here before our coming, we arrived with a fresh, clean page.  In those months we have explored, we have hiked, we have cut paths of our own extending the ones inherited; we have trimmed and cleared, we have plowed and planted and weeded and dreamed; we have watered and harvested and planted some more.  Not permanent ones, we hope, but we have left our mark on this land to which we've come.  And though there is much still to learn, to experience, to practice and to dream, I am proud of our efforts.

 All that said about the last week and the last year, there was something magically compelling about the pristine smoothness of the fresh snow.

Appropriate, then, that it is snowing again this morning, here inching toward the birth cry of a new year -- creation's Etch-A-Sketch of both the calendar and the land.  For a few fleeting hours the ruts and bald places in the landscape will be filled in and smoothed out, and the unwrapped calendar, still devoid of entries, will be hung.  Everything clean and clear -- a panorama of the pristine.

The deer, I'm sure, will be back this evening tracking through the crystalline meringue; and we already have things to do and places to go and a New Year's worth of experiences to gain and memories to make.  But for just a few hours in the silence of falling snow, here at the benediction of a closing year and the invocation of a fresh one...

...all is beautiful, evocative...
...possibility