Prepare the Royal Highway

For two or three days this week we were living in a magical kingdom around here. It started from adverse circumstances. Late one afternoon my husband came in the house and said that it was misting. After supper it got worse. It rained so hard that I could hear it pounding on the roof--in winter, Up North, for heaven's sake, with the temperature hovering around thirty degrees. When my husband went out one more time to put wood in the outside wood furnace, he found every step an icy challenge. While we slept, the rain changed to snow. In the morning, every single outside thing was coated with ice, topped with fluffy, clean snow and the sun was brightly shining. Branches of trees and bushes and all the plants and grasses were bending toward the ground under their loads in graceful arcs. I had been house bound for several days with a knee that hurt bad if I tryed to straighten it out or put weight on it. This was my left knee, which is supposed to be my 'better' knee. My other 'worse' knee wasn't up to the challenge of carrying all of me around, so it was hurting too. I couldn't manage our usual late afternoon walk through the woods on our trail full of snow and icy rubble. In the Lutheran hymn book there is an Advent hymn, "Prepare the Royal Highway." That is what my husband decided to do. The tractor was in the garden shed and kindly agreed to start. So off they went, my husband, with Bear for company, barking and nipping the tractor tires. Sadie hung back reluctantly. She is ambivalent about tractor excursions for some reason. On two different days they carefully graded the logging road which makes up a good two thirds of our trail through the state land east of us. They were anxious for me to try it out. Finally, my leg loosened up enough for me to attempt it. We started down the driveway at four thirty just as the sun was starting to go down. Picture this. All the bottom branches of trees, both evergreen and deciduous, were covered with cool, clean snow. The icy top branches were shining with the sun's golden orange light. We crossed over the sand ridge, went through the little meadow, and there it was, the Royal Highway. Colder temperatures had frozen it down solid. It was as fine a place for a winter afternoon's walk as you could have wished for. As we came out into the cut over woods, the light was fading fast. The upper part of the sky was blue. The horizon was pink and lined with snow covered evergreens. Above us was a nearly full moon. As if this wasn't enough, off to our side, flying low into the big woods, was an eagle. The light of the moon on its white head and tail made it certain. If a Royal Highway is prepared just for you in a magical kingdom, what does that make you? A queen?

New Year's reflections

I am reading a book entitled Blue Peninsula by Madge McKeithen. She has a son with a mysterious,nameless disease that is causing both his physical and mental deterioration. It is a book formed around poetry--about how poetry speaks to us and for us and about us, the closest expression of what we feel. Many diverse poems have lifted and held her....I might as well admit that among my first reactions to the book was jealousy. I'm always a little jealous when I meet a mind that's bigger than my own, when I have to stretch a little to follow where I'm led. A second reaction was to start copying down some of the poems that this author has found so that I could read them again when the book is back on the library shelf. But I think not. I think I'll buy this book and keep it....All my sons and my daughter, too, seem strong and healthy and are building lives that I'm proud to see. My husband and I are living the life that I longed for back when we were in the thick of things. Here in this beautiful North Country there is time--time to be quiet, to smell the roses, to be together. But when you leave the thick of things, you leave purpose behind too. Busyness disguised the fact that large chunks of life had broken off and are floating away like an ice shelf from Ellsmere Island. Christmas letters are now fearful to open. Houses full of memories have been sold and traded for easier apartments. Illnesses have developed. Spouses have died. Suddenly it seems much is in the past and there's only a little future. "How long?", is a haunting shadow. A coward dies a thousand deaths. That's me.