nature

Snow, Saturday, Living in History

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Saturday morning, we wake to a snowfall — gorgeous fat flakes swirling down — the kind of sparkling snow that miraculously turns the world brand-new and utterly beautiful.

In early afternoon when I return from work, the girls have shoveled the paths and driveway and deck. Inside, they’re drinking tea in front of the wood stove and putting together a puzzle my sister sent from Virginia, a pretty blue puzzle with birds.

I stand at the glass door drinking coffee, thinking where I stood that morning, on the shores of Caspian Lake, its center obscured by drapes of falling snow. Bundled in hats and masks and scarves, I stood talking with another woman about the small town planning process. Then our conversation wandered into the oddities of human life, how determined we all are at times — and I’ll put myself firmly there — to keep our attention focused on our own little stamp of land and home, be it a postage-stamp-sized piece or hundreds of acres. Meanwhile, the snow, the rising and setting sun, the wandering woodland creatures, continue on.

Saturday afternoon, I claim my own place near the fire and read The New Yorker‘s recent “The Plague Year” by Lawrence Wright, reading aloud pieces to my daughters, saying, This is the history you’re living through. This is your story, too…. It’s a lesson for me, too, when I dream of living elsewhere, where sleet doesn’t fall, where the cost of living isn’t crazy-high, where the sun shines even in the heart of winter — a reminder for me to embrace my own accidental luck to live here.

Nations and states that have done relatively well during this crisis have been led by strong, compassionate, decisive leaders who speak candidly with their constituents. In Vermont, Governor Phil Scott, a Republican, closed the state early, and reopened cautiously, keeping the number of cases and the death toll low. “This should be the model for the country,” Fauci told state leaders, in September. If the national fatality rate were the same as Vermont’s, some two hundred and fifty thousand Americans would still be alive. 

— Lawrence Wright

More found stuff…

Van Gogh

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Late Saturday afternoon in the heat, the girls load up the canoe while I’m lying on the porch reading. I’m so tired I’m near to sleeping, but the girls have packed up dinner. On there way there, my 15-year-old, driving, says, Uh-oh, as the canoe slides ever so slowly to the left on the roof of my car.

Again, so near to sleeping in the heat, I say, You could ease the car over to the side of the road. She does. Her sister does some magic (or enough magic) with the straps, and then we’re on our way again.

Fortunately, we’re not going far.

On #10 Pond in Calais, we paddle out, listening to the loons. In the center, we pause and eat dinner. Eventually, the youngest says, Those loons are surrounding us — mama, daddy, teens. For the longest time, we simply sit there, listening. Then the oldest dips in a paddle and breaks the pond’s glassy surface.

It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.

— Van Gogh

For lovers of Van Gogh — and who isn’t? — here’s a fascinating NYT piece about his presumed final painting. I recommend the free book.

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Photo by Molly S./Calais, VT

Maple

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

End of the day, in the gloaming, I’m running up the road. A little bit of snow is falling, and — dare I write this in December? — it’s just nice. That sweet, snowglobe kind of beauty.

In not so many minutes, I know I’ll need to get off this somewhat slippery and icy road before a pickup turns a bend a bit too quickly, its driver maybe distracted by the same things I am, the enchanting serenity of these maples, this field, the light funneling down over the horizon.

I know, too, as I start cooking dinner that I’ll listen to VPR. My listening, or not, has absolutely zero bearing on congressional hearings. I’ll be irked. And yet, I’ll listen, if for no other reason to participate in the dinner conversation at our house.

For for these few moments, though, I revel in the sky, the snow, the crows in the distance flying home, too.

Surely by now there can be few here who still believe the purpose of government is to protect us from the destructive activities of corporations. At last most of us must understand that the opposite is true: that the primary purpose of government is to protect those who run the economy from the outrage of injured citizens.

― Derrick Jensen

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Hardwick, Vermont

Turtle Emergence

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

Driving home from a soccer game in Barre — I must always be writing about driving, driving, as maybe that’s when my mind wanders most, maybe thinks the best — we’re tired, or I’m tired at least, and my daughter must be starved. It’s raining, and the way is wooded and green.

Stopping at my library, on the way home, it’s wood turtle day. The hard-backed creatures have laid their eggs and are edging their way back to the wetlands. I see a six almost immediately in the grass. Looking down at the kids’ soccer field, the turtles are on the move, their ancient dance alive on this hot and now rainy summer evening.

My daughter stands silently, rapt.

Some late night reading….

(Aldous Huxley after an LSD trip wrote he saw)… ‘the direct, total awareness, from the inside, so to say, of Love as the primary and fundamental cosmic fact.’ The force of this insight seemed almost to embarrass the writer in its baldness: ‘The words, of course, have a kind of indecency and must necessarily ring false, seem like twaddle. But the fact remains.’

Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind

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Interlude of Laughing

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Camping on the shore of Lake Champlain this weekend with three enthusiastic 13-year-old girls, we did summer staying-on-an-island things — we biked and we swam for hours (and I mean hours). We walked on the breakwater at sunset. The loons woke us with their crazy calling at night. I read; the girls explored.

And we talked and talked and talked. The girls, giggling, spied on a father camping nearby. He told his two tiny boys, who wore only orange crocs, that Whining and dessert are counter to each other.

Someday, I told the girls, they might hear themselves saying something equally inane as a parent.

The island’s grass, always so lush and cool, had withered brown with lack of rain. The last morning there, rain began just after dawn. I lay in the tent, listening to the welcome patter, and then, just as I believed rain might be settling in for a day, it abruptly ceased, as if shut off.

In the unrelieved humidity, we packed slowly.

A glossy bit of summer in the land of childhood.

Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.

— Flannery O’Connor

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Burton Island, Vermont

 

Purple Sky

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

With a friend, my 11-old-year daughter recently began running – with an interest beyond beloved companionship and the ice cream at the trail’s end. Lacing up her shoes, I see a keenness in her, a love of knowing her body is capable of carrying her a distance.

In last evening’s sultriness, the girls witnessed heat lightening. The sky was purple, my daughter told me excitedly, and the air must have been alive with electricity. I could imagine these two pony-tailed girls running on Morrisville’s rail trail, their eyes wide, determining their route to safety.

These girls have never lived where the sky isn’t omnipresent; inherently, they know to watch the weather. They’ve never lived where the sky is obscured by smog, wires, buildings. Doubtless, they were frightened, but also in awe of nature’s magnificence, power, and certainly her beauty. And that’s one lucky thing.

Purple, my daughter reiterated. Amazing.

Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies… and to the “good life”, whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.

– Hunter S. Thompson

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