rainbows

All kinds of summer rains…

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

Too stormy to swim on Sunday, I take up a new friend’s offer to walk the trails she’s cut on her property. Her property is off a back road, with a gorgeous view into the valley where the Lamoille River is barely beginning to fatten its strength.

The trails wind down through the woods, studded with white quartz on either side, so gleaming the rocks appear to have been freshly washed. On the verge of rain, the forest is still. In a kind of labyrinth, I walk over springy moss, beneath leaning cedars, around a former beaver pond now dense with green. At the far end, I lean against a great pine, bark rough through my t-shirt.

Rain begins, pattering through the canopy, then soaking me by the time I’ve returned to my Subaru parked at the edge of the road. I’m so soaked the windshield scrims over with fog. But the time the glass clears and I’m on my way, the rain has stopped, the sun burst through the pearly clouds. In no rush, I pull over and walk along the road, admiring the luminescent rainbow, one end in a leafy hedgerow of maples.

Sunday afternoon, rural Vermont, there’s no one around. I keep walking, thinking about a conversation I had recently with a geologist about what’s happening in Vermont. He’d stepped away from a conference to answer my questions for an essay I’m writing, and gently pointed out that the concatenation of flooding and heavy rainfalls and the great shifting around of debris has been human-caused, not by the folks who live on slopes or streams, but collectively.

His voice is persistent, filled with facts, but also not despair; we need to be cognizant, wide awake, look lively. His voice reminded me of what a good summer’s rainstorm used to be, not so long ago. You might sit on the covered steps of your back porch, listening to the rain gather strength to satisfy your kale and broccoli, the thirsty hydrangeas.

The rainbow winks out, and I head home, carrying with me the memory of those silvery cedars, a few chips of pine bark nestled in my hair.

What’s Here

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

In a wet, raw snowfall, I lean against a maple tree behind the high school and talk on the phone. It’s mid-afternoon, and I don’t see a single person.

I’m clearing my head after a work conference with Skype. Skype, Zoom, google hangout — the whole thing — why bother? Vermont has completely shut down, as it appears most of the country and much of the world, too. During this hard time, much of this stuff just doesn’t matter, it seems to me, while other stuff does.

I’m worrying hard about what so many other people are — my job and income. How will my teenager survive isolation as a sole teenager in this house? But other worries — like what kind of parenting I’ve done — seem to have vanished utterly, as if knocked under an ocean wave.

My little family of my two daughters is tighter and closer than we’ve ever been, with both daughters stepping up immediately. We’re hardly alone in this. I hear from family after family, where family means something different now — deeper and richer.

It’s a strange world these days, where playgrounds are empty of children, and no one lingers in the post office, laughing and passing bits of news and gossip. We live in a world of masks and wary eyes now.

Nonetheless, in this upended world, there’s gems, sparkling and true.

I finish that phone call and lean against the tree trunk. The wet snow soaks my jeans and down jacket. I shiver for a while, and then eventually I head home. My daughter is baking a cake. Our deck of cards lies on the kitchen table.

Just around the corner,
there’s a rainbow in the sky,
So let’s have another cup of coffee,
and let’s have another piece of pie.

IMG_7497

Courage

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

Driving along the interstate the yesterday, I looked up at blue heron winging its oddly graceful way, silently above the rush-hour pavement. This strange bird, who always reminds me of its ancient, prehistoric ancestors, set me thinking of what I’m writing, where turkey vultures circle and ascend, silently, reappearing over and over in this novel, a wordless image of mortality.

On this drive home, the sprawl of Burlington thins gradually, and with relief  I cross over the Morrisville border where the farm fields spread out, and Mt. Elmore appears to my right, my familiar blue companion. I was still thinking of those vultures and that solitary heron when the rain began again, hurling down in handfuls as I alternated through patches of downpour and sunny spots. As I drove out of Morrisville, up the hill towards Elmore, the rainbows appeared, two great arcs, iridescent beyond belief, their tails not tucked neatly behind the mountain, but seemingly almost right before me: they seemed so near I could practically pull over, sprint into the woods, and discover their mythical ends. I parked on a dirt road and jumped out. The rain had already ceased, and only the green still shimmered its glittery glow. The other colors had already faded and paled, wicked away into the clouds.

I stood there watching the rainbows disappear into nothingness. The rain had muddied the road and swept a coolness over the day’s heat. The crickets sang weakly, as if they neared sleep.  The wet soil and tangled weeds along the roadside emitted a briny scent that reminded me of a place in Maine where we had once been happy. I wondered if the fall was edging in there, too, this place where I would never return.

The last miles home, I thought of those things–heron, vulture, rainbows, the Maine ocean and sky. The next morning, I told my younger nephew I had seen a double rainbow, and he asked, A double rainbow? Are you sure?

Yes, I said. I’m sure.

Let it not be said that in passing through this world
you turned your face and left its wounds unattended.
Instead, let it be said that when your friends
cut open your chest to partake of its courage,
a loon was calling.

–– Janisse Ray

IMG_3628

Photo by Molly Blume S.