210124 to let the river

Jan. 24

 Six days it snowed: sometimes there was no world at all beyond our clearing.

Yesterday there was a pale sun, but the mountains were still obscured by the blowing snow.

   

Today the sun shines in earnest; but still the snow blows down the hill.  

For six days it snowed: the valley and the distant hills were obscured by cloud and blown snow. Yesterday even though the sun showed a pale disc in the sky, the world beyond our small hill was still hidden. It seems as if we have been alone for weeks.

This morning, the valley is back and the shoulders of the distant hills circle round again bleak and distant, black with forest and patched with white, and the sky, at last, is blue. 

Still the snow blows down our hill and the wind howls in the chimney, though the sun shines in and turns the snow outside to diamonds. I love this place with a heart-wrenching ache, literally I feel the twisting burst in my chest , watching the reckless twirling snow along the black line of trees.

The isolation of this place is so acute because of the isolation covid19 has imposed on us all. It is "a time to refrain from embracing."* Toronto, only hours away is nevertheless in a foreign country, beyond the boundary of our small country, even Montreal seems distant, unreachable, too fearfully dangerous a place to go. Rain has travelled beyond the edge of the world to Toronto: the day she left I felt the war zone, plague-ravaged distance between us, province and country, friend and neighbour. On Friday, I drove the five minutes to Mansonville, and even then, the roads were snow-covered and empty, mine the only car parked outside a store. When I got home I realized that I had been hearing the smiles of the store keepers somehow, something in my mind lending a touch of kindness to their voices without which the distance between us would be too wide. Even then, I came home without a real sense of having met another human. Too heavy, too heavy our hearts.

I have stepped through a door into a sadness that takes me by surprise, even in the midst of my awareness of the space between us all, of the urgency of this plague, here is a cold outside place - i want to go back in to that warm place of hope where I felt content with the patience of the days. Maybe the twisting in my heart is because of the sadness. I wish I could shut the door again. 

The sun is higher in the sky today and in the distance the mountains are clearer and seem more concrete. I am sitting by the window to write and the sun is warm on my hands. I will try and let the sadness be, and try not to be afraid. 

  

Sometimes it is harder to let the river be.

"There is a time to every purpose ... a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance ... a time to embrace,

and a time to refrain from embracing." *

Mumma Yaga 

We'll dance again. 

* Ecclesiastes 3