here goes

Snowing lightly this morning. Sometimes the direction of the storm can be determined by the snow stuck to the sides of trees. People pulling windshield wipers away from the windshields on their cars. I think it's to keep them from sticking. I've always thought the depth of winter occurred between my birthday & Allyn's birthday. Here goes.

lighter

This morning the temperature is 15 degrees. Yesterday is was -11. Road salt obscuring vision on the ride to work yesterday. I stopped at a convenience store to clean it off, but the windshield washer fluid was frozen in the pails. The Otter Creek was frozen. And yet, when I got to the mall at the usual time for the morning walk, it seemed a little bit lighter.

mind of winter

Thermometer at -11degrees this morning.

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

The Snow Man

Wallace Stevens

colder

Fourteen degrees this morning, and supposed to get much colder. Taking Christmas cards down from the door to my office at work. When walking on the crossroads on really cold days, have to brush the tears out of my eyes. Glasses fogging up when coming in from the cold.

clanging

Full moon, the "Wolf" moon, shining brightly this morning. Yesterday cold Arctic air was ushered in on a brisk northwest wind. Pine trees sighing outside my office, traffic signs rattling in the breeze, flags totally unfurled. The clanging of metallic clasps against the flagpoles made me think of the masts of wooden ships on stormy seas.
The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation in uninterrupted, but few are the ears that hear it.
Walden
Henry David Thoreau

food & fun

We took a hike out to Wallingford Pond with Doug & Kim on Saturday. Afterwards had food & fun around the warmth of their wood stove. Who says you can't have fun in Vermont in January?

early

I have been getting up early in the morning to walk. It was 15 degrees the other morning with very small snowflakes more floating than falling under the outside lights. The light from the windows is blazing in the house when I return; rectangles within rectangles.
What is the course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society,  or the most admirable routine of life compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?
Walden
Henry David Thoreau