A First Snow’s Morning

First Snow
This is the gift the world has given him:
snow in hallows on roofs, branches, streets,
the long white candle on the window,
burning to dusk while snow fills up the city—
all these white contours filling his life—
starlight behind daylight wherever he gazes
~Jonathan Moya

Haiku - Snowflakes
snowflakes
on my lashes
tears of joy
~Orense Nicod 

The classic philosophical, theological curiosity is the number of angels that could dance on the head of a pin.  I’ll leave that dilemma to the theologically bored and speculative.  This morning I am more fascinated by an earthier query:  how many snowflakes can gather on the head of a hydrangea, at just the perfect angle of repose?  How many can squeeze themselves onto a pine needle, like birds on a wire, until the whole assemblage spills on this morning following the first snow of the season?

The questions only serve the smile that has elicited them.  I accept that the precipitation likely inconveniences the lagging “Black Friday” shoppers, and inhibits “Small Business Saturday” browsers and diners.  There will likely come a time, in February or March, when the sight of flakes descending will evoke a cursing groan, but here in the waning days of November, while Thanksgiving leftovers still crowd the refrigerator shelves, the exhilaration is giddy.  I shiver - partly from the crisp autumn air, but mostly from a wondrously childlike joy.  

There is a brief wince of course.  For all of our preparations for winter around the farmstead that have lulled us into smug satisfaction, I am haunted now by the details yet undone - like removing the mower deck from the tractor and attaching, in its place, the snowblower.   Scraping the shovel across the inches accumulated on the front porch, additional items join the list.  Like locating my leather work mittens and checking our supply of ice melt.  More straw bales are needed in the chicken yard, and the bees need a final check.

 

And it will all be gone before very long.  The melting has already begun in the white crystalline light of morning.  It's not yet winter after all, despite this brief foretaste.

For now, though, it is enough to relish this first snow’s morning.  

 

To shiver.  

 

To tally that crowded pine needle.  

And like the child I never want to forget how to be, 

 

to smile.

And Now The Quieter Stillness

“All is safely gathered in,

Ere the winter storms begin.”

It is the quiescent season that has settled upon the farmstead.  The garden is cleared and settled for winter.  The chicken coops have been prepared for the cold.  The brush has been mowed and the tools are in the shed.  The farmstead is resting.  All is safely gathered in.

As a teenager I sold ice cream on the streets of my hometown from a little three-wheeled gas-powered Cushman ice cream wagon.  The Popsicle wrapper referred to the contents as a “quiescently frozen confection”. Somehow, in those pre-Google days I learned that the word simply means “from a restful state” - liquid placed in a mold and left alone to freeze - as opposed to ice cream which is born from the agitation of constant stirring.

And so these rural quiescent days, born from a restful state.  It arrives with weary welcome.  The fruitfulness of summer and the frenzied preparations of autumn come at the price of long and exhausting hours and stiffly sore muscles, grateful rest, albeit little enough.  Even then it is difficult to keep up.  There always seems to be more to do than time and energy can match.  And so it is that the stored rain barrels, the rolled hoses, and the resting tools elicit a contented exhalation.  

Even inside the house the common flurries of harvest activity has stilled.  The canning water has cooled, the dehydrators are unplugged, and the cabbage is fermenting in the crocks.  Other stirrings have taken their place, but it is movement of a different sort; more cerebral, more cultivation and harvest of the head and heart.

And so we will see what crystals form in us as the temperatures drop on this more restful state - what flavors might brighten for the delight and quenching of a later day.  Perhaps we will use them to cultivate friendships rather than flowers.  Perhaps we will use them to feed fresh ideas and innovative possibilities for healing the discourse so poisoned in the culture around us even as we learn new methods for healing the garden soil.  Perhaps we will use them to strengthen and deepen the mutuality intrinsic in the companion planting of our marriage, even as we study better ways to position the vegetables to encourage and benefit each other.  Perhaps we can use them to enrich our spiritual fertility, tilling into our very souls the organic matter of scripture and poetry, wise thinkers and the patient observation of awe.  

And perhaps we will use this season of “a restful state” to rest.

“All is safely gathered in.”  Time now to quiescently gather in ourselves.