nuances

The pond shimmies in the cold, as if to say to the chill wind, “You can’t catch me.” The next morning, it wears a necklace of ice around its edges but continues to bob and weave. The wind gives up, and the calm breath of December descends overnight, slowly, slowly.

In the morning, the pond is still. And shiny and smooth.

It escapes its bonds one more time during a heavy rain. But then, the skies clear, it’s quiet in the night, and the ice-maker creeps in again. The pond will sleep now until spring.

While late autumn recedes, I’ve been reading a lot of Hal Borland.

Until last summer, I was unfamiliar with his work. I found out about him inadvertently, serendipitously, during a visit to one of our favorite bookstores, Blue Hill Books, in Blue Hill, Maine.

I happened to pick up a book there called Small Misty Mountain: The Awanadjo Almanack, by Rob McCall. The book is McCall’s daily record, his almanac of natural occurrences in and around Blue Hill and the nearby mountain called Blue Hill Mountain or Awanadjo. McCall quotes Borland here and there and includes several books in his bibliography. So, I went digging.

Borland, it turns out, wrote many fine books, most of them about the large patch of country he and his wife owned in northwest Connecticut on the Hoosatonic River. He was a well-respected nature writer, with a weekly column in the New York Times for over 30 years. He died in 1978, and his books went rather quickly out of print after his death. That’s a sad thing, because the ones I’ve been able to find used are wonderful. Discovering him has been like finding an old friend. My favorite books of his, at least thus far, are Twelve Moons of the Year (1979) and This Hill, This Valley (1957).

Borland was a careful observer of the nuances of the natural world.  He didn’t like being called a nature writer; he thought of himself as a natural philosopher. His observations of the southern Berkshire foothills are those that you can’t find in any field guide.

Many of Borland’s observations resonate with my own impressions of the natural world.

Take his description of tamarack trees in This Hill, This Valley. I had heard of tamaracks, also called larches, before. I may have even seen a few. But his description of them in late autumn intrigued me, and I started to look for them around here. One day late last month when I was driving home on one of my favorite roads, I gazed over at a stand of white pines at the far end of a farmer’s field, and, there, I noticed a clutch of about ten tamaracks. I almost drove off the road, not just because I was excited to finally see some of these trees in the fall, but because I was astonished at what they looked like.

They were as striking as Borland described. They were standing there, glowing “like giant candle flames of yellowish tan, tall and slim and symmetrical. They [were] about to shed their needles, for they are the woodchucks of the conifers, the only ones in our area which “hibernate” in the Winter. Their tufted needles will soon fall in a yellow shower and the bright tan of their branches will stand out against the grays and browns of the Winter hillsides.” (p. 206)

Like Borland, I find myself becoming an ever more careful observer.

The moss and lichens on the trees are green after last week’s heavy rain, as is the ground pine – a miniature forest running under my boots on which I try not to step. The sky is gray, though it is lit with that light that often foretells snow.

The temperatures have dropped again. I continue to believe there is clarity in the cold. The “drowsies” caused by my medication don’t stand a chance against 16º F when I’m out filling bird feeders and walking the pond edge. The bare trees reveal their bone structure.  Some are scrubby and non-descript. Others are magnificent, the Classical nude sculptures of the tree world.

Just before dusk, I watch the common winter songbirds at the feeders, and I am happy. These little creatures of feather and air have no idea how often they communicate their lightness to me. There is nothing remotely complicated about watching chickadees, titmice, and a single nuthatch fill up on seed before sundown. Yet, it is a pastime that has been bringing me pleasure and peace since I was a child.

The squirrels have already gone to their safe overnight places. The smaller birds are joined by a pair of cardinals. There is no noise but the back and forth twitterings of the cardinals. The end of the daylight, as I watch it happen, especially at this time of the year, is a peaceful time.

On one tree, a jay, a male cardinal, and a male Red-bellied woodpecker. So much color on a gray day.

Borland suggests that it takes time for our eyes to adjust from autumn’s fill-your-eyes-and-then-some color to winter’s subtle shadings. It does take a long time.

The colors of autumn are my favorite colors, the ones with which I would always choose to adorn and surround myself given a chance. It is the accent colors of winter of which I’m most fond – red and green – not the everyday browns and tans.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t developed an appreciation for those warm browns, redolent of spices and baking. The giant oak leaves that still don’t want to let go are the color of perfectly done toast. I would love to stroke the soft cinnamon fur of the red squirrel, and I’m amazed that the little Carolina wren can have feathers the exact shade of freshly grated nutmeg.

In This Hill, This Valley, Borland says, “Color becomes relative as the seasons shift. Brilliance is less a matter of color itself than one of contrast. The less there is to see, the more one sees of it. The eyes sharpen as the days turn chill and woods turn gray.”

The ears sharpen as well.

The coyotes are back now. I heard them singing the night before last, just as I was falling asleep. For a moment, I thought I was dreaming. In the next second, I knew I was awake. I hadn’t heard them in months. They come with the frozen waterways and ponds. I am deeply and profoundly grateful to hear coyotes still singing in the wild, their calls rolling and echoing across the icy dark.

The days are almost at their shortest. Night rules. But then daylight will start to tick back the other way. The end of the year really has nothing to do with the calendar. It might be better marked by the Winter Solstice, the shortest day.

This year, the Solstice coincides with the full moon, the Cold Moon, as the full moon of December is called. I’ve read that a solstitian full moon is a rare thing. In addition, there will be a full lunar eclipse visible in North America in the wee hours of the morning of December 21. Let me leave you with this, then, from my friend, Mr. Borland, writing in Twelve Moons of the Year, and whose voice you’ll likely encounter here again:

Now the year balances its accounts. … In our latitude we know that every year brings this time when not only the candle but the fire on the hearth, figurative if not literal, must burn at each end of the day…

And yet the short days provide their own bonus. The snows come, and dawn and dusk are like no other time of the year. We know again the long winter nights when the moon rides over a white world and the darkness thins away. The full-moon night on a snow-clad world is as long as the longest summer day, and the winter world glows with an ethereal shimmer.

Year to year we remember the short days and we tend to forget the long nights of moonlight and starlight, when it seems one might stand on a high hill and touch the Big Dipper. Who would not cut wood and burn a candle for a few such nights each year? (p. 348)

Peace and light to you this season from Pine Meadow Pond.

Tagged as: birds, books, cold, coyote song, coyotes, full moon, ice, lunar eclipse, Maine, moon, night, tamaracks, winter, Winter Solstice