This morning

A fine dusting of snow, maybe an inch, still coming down. I don't think it'll amount to much. The grass still sticks out like Walt Whitman's uncut hair of graves, so the snowmobilers and skiers will have to continue chomping at their collective bits. It's beautiful out, stark and sepia toned. I walked to the top of the rise and looked out on the woods and far off mountains and felt I was inside a daguerreotype. If it hadn't been for the occasional vehicle humming down the road, it could've been a hundred plus years ago. Richard and I were both out feeding and watering the various birds and couldn't help stopping and taking it all in, smiling, appreciating it all, giving a thank you to the skies, to whoever or whatever is listening. Maybe the wind.

Someone described January as a kind of void caught in between the fatigue from the holiday season and the beginning preparations of what we plan to bring forth in the new year. I like that. I can feel that. It's a combination sense of hibernation and stocking up of the spirit, fertilizing the foundation for whatever may take seed. How am I stocking? Well today I'm writing, doing a little reading (I'm reading both Stephen King's new book "11/22/63" - a fun venture into time travel to correct the Kennedy Assassination - and Patti Smith's "Just Kids" - what a terrific writer she is. I also hope to begin a rereading of the Oresteia (Aeschylus ain't so bad neither) for our local library's book club later in the month, facilitated by a member of the Vermont Department of the Humanities. Classic Greek plays form the curriculum this year. In years past we've had Victorian Novels (my first Trollope), short stories, memoir. They're delicious. And such a warm, vital group of engaged people taking part. Okay, the book club has to be one of my 100 reasons. That will make it reason 50-what? I've lost track.) Later in the day, after making a big pot of soup and taking a winter's hike to visit neighbors down the road, I will return and watch another installment of Leonard Bernstein's "Concerts for Young People" from the late '50's, early '60's. My God, they're magnificent. I'm learning so much. And it's piqued my interest to take up an instrument again. It's been years. When I was young I played the violin. I wasn't too bad, either. I'd take part in music competitions, I took private lessons. But there was no great passion behind it. It took a spring concert in my sophomore year in high school where we were playing Rimsky-Korsakov's "Russian Easter" and my entire focus was to try and keep my bow going in the same direction as all the other violin players around me let alone play the right notes when I finally decided this wasn't for me. Then about 7 or 8 years ago, I took up the piano for a couple years. I had told myself it was an impossibility, that my hands weren't long and lithe as a piano player's should be. Goes to show you what faulty belief systems get lodged in one's mind. And playing the piano was surprisingly joyous. Doing the silly little exercises, coordinating both hands, the sheer miracle that I could do it, that I was doing it, that I was redefining a notion in my head. So why did I let that go? Moves. Not having a piano around. Lack of interest or focus. I wonder what instrument will find it's way into my life next? There's a yearning for some connection to music. Thanks, Leonard.

Here's another stocking of the spirit. I just got off the phone with Richard, and we've decided to both do a 9 day cleanse to rid ourselves of some excess holiday poundage and to get our year off to a fine, healthy start. It's based on an Isagenix nutritional program and we've had great success doing it before and it's easier when were both doing it together. We plan to begin Monday after hosting a big January meal with friends on Sunday. Send us off on our nutritional voyage in style. This is good, this is good.

The snow has stopped. About an inch or 2. Going out to see how many eggs our chickens have laid so far this morning. We opened both coop's back doors this morning, something we haven't been able to do for the past several days because of the frigid weather, but the chickens have no truck with snow. They come to the doorway and just look out. "Nuh-uh, not for me" and go back inside. The geese are doing fine, though. They're foraging around for bits of Whitman's grave hair. The bright, bold orange of their beaks and legs look so gorgeous contrasted against the white, grey of the landscape. Every once and awhile they'll squat down in the snow to keep their feet warm with all that good goose down. I'll walk them back up to their pen before I take my walk. Predators are a little rare this early in the winter, but they're still about. Here inside, 3 of our cats - Astrid, Sofia, and Delilah - are konked out around the wood stove. They are amazing sleepers. Teachers of nap. It's catching. Who knows, that may be another stocker of spirit sometime today, dreamtime.

Be well.