Coyotes howled along the brook by the log yard last night as I walked home in the dark, hurrying in the cold that gnawed my face.
Ten below zero this morning. In the deep cold, smoke curls up from our neighbors’ chimney. My long love affair with Vermont strangely deepens in these days as friends fly out for school break to other places: warm Caribbean waters or hot Florida sands.
Inexorably, the days lengthen on either end, the palest of blue in the mornings, shades of violet and rose in the evenings. At dinner, we think of those tulip and crocus bulbs buried deep in the earth, secreted beneath snow, patient, patient, even as the earth spins its slow way toward March.
I thought that there was only ever a thing and its opposite, and nothing in between. In writing this book I have come to believe in this far less than I did when I started. Unraveling and unlearning this split logic is crucial to justice, I think, and it is crucial to love — loving a person, community, or most of all perhaps, a place, which may turn out to be the same thing.
— Emma Copely Eisenberg, The Third Rainbow Girl
Photo by Molly S.
Stony Soil Vermont 
Love the photo and the homage to cold. Also 10 below here, but the sun is shining. The air is still. The hoar frost is amazing.
What a day! Gorgeous!
Great quote. And nice pic! 17 below here.
Yeah, Hardwick is really in the banana belt of Vermont….
Stay warm! But better than the torrential rain and constant just above freezing temperatures here in Germany. We lost our winter to global warming 😉
I’m so sorry to hear that. I think winter will be an experience of the past when my daughters are my age. Thanks for sharing from the other side of the globe.
I find the cold much easier to take when there is sunshine as well. A glorious sun today, and I’m looking forward to some slightly warmer temperatures. I love the quote. As I get older, I find that most of it is in between.
Likewise. In-between was not in my vocabulary when I was 20. Enjoy your sun!