Male Alder catkins
Took a walk this afternoon before the storm comes in tomorrow. Snow then ice predicted. I often think of the people who lived here in the 19th century and before – native Americans must have settled along the creek long before white people – who did not have the radar to tell them when storms would come.
Tonight the sky is perfectly clear. How could anyone know a storm is coming? Jupiter is rising now around 6 p.m., the new moon and Venus sparkling just over the crest of the ecliptic and on their way down to set behind Joanna’s hills. Little red Mars will rise later over the east meadow.
We are blessed with dark skies and peace and quiet in the hollow, true luxuries in this crowded world. The surrounding hills make an oculus of the sky and we look up into the purity of the Milky Way stretched across black velvet from east to west, Cassiopeia rising to the north above the potting shed and Orion reaching his arms up above his belt behind the hill to the south. We have a lower horizon in winter with the contours of the hills now apparent through the bare trees.
Often on my walks I am struck by the silence, sometimes not a sound to be heard, when there is not even the thrum of a distant jet. Yet we have our winter sounds. In the meadow, the creek runs high, with two little “falls” rushing behind the cherry bench, like water pouring into a bathtub. The birds peep themselves to sleep in the forsythia tangle. We all settle in for the cold, cold night.
