A Tide of Swallows

If I were a certain kind of bear, I would be closing my eyes and placing my large, soft nose in the crook of my arm, journeying into the vast Dreamtime as the days grew short and the wet rain turned to snow, but I am not that kind of bear, and so I blink at the struggling light, disoriented by the change, and walk the lands of the fading sun instead. I’m ready for the weekend, and that’s all I can say of my experience today for a few hours of nothingness awaits me. 

I left the house heading West, riding the edge of the sun as it dipped below the horizon; in the narrow band of daylight in the chill of the afternoon there was a tensed silence, a grasping on to the fleeting warmth of the Earth, a knowing that the fog was poised just over the mountains, waiting. I had a fairly easy end to the week an early start to the weekend, and a wonderful evening meal with my wife.

Undaunted by the weakened sun, the fog lingered in the valleys for well into the day before returning to the land of mists and shadow, giving way to the brilliant blue sky, crisp and cold and iced-edged, before it too fell to darkness. This was a rare perfect, happy, connective day that contained a brunch with a good friend, crystal shopping for two hours, cooperative game playing in a local coffee shop, and after he had gone home, movie watching while bundled up on the sofa.

I spied it in the few moments I left the kitchen, with the smells of baking cookies and pastries and the sounds of Christmas songs filling the house – a winter world continuing on, unaware of the holiday traditions of humans, but even unexperienced directly, it was such a deep, unspoken, essential instinctual connection that for a moment it took my breath away in realizing it. Baking day is complete here in our little home as we propel ourself towards the season and the end of the year.

The darkness took a final hold on the afternoon and then began to falter as the light gained strength and pushed back against the sunset, driving it further into the day, a rally against the short shadows, faint contractions of time and rebirth. After a day of technical challenges, I was already ready to stop for the week, but as it turns out, that’s not really an option.

The geese flew west towards my window, and as they passed I turned away from my screens and my stress and watched their wide wings spread, closed my eyes and let their dusk calls wash clean my thoughts until they vanished overhead into the setting sun, leaving me back in the world of humans. There’s not too much to say about these kinds of days, full of movement that often has no meaning other than survival, and some grasping at small moments that define my truth taken in-between.

The sky glowed the deep pink of cold-climate sunsets, rich and soft fuscias edged with rose and crepe reflecting off the frosted rooftops, everything still and peaceful and perfect. I’m struggling with anxiety again, though the promise of the season to come is a great enabler of compartmentalization.

It’s the kind of cold that seeps into your bones, the wet December cold that rattles your teeth and waters your nose, and as bodies hunch over to meet it, eyes tilted downward towards the solid-packed earth, breath comes shorter and feet shuttle clumsily and somewhere the howl of the wind comes like a marauding lupine harbinger of deeper winter. I worked late tonight and seem somewhat confused of my direction, hoping that the busy weekend to come gives me some holiday cheer.

Like a sudden gust of wind it came, pelting the windows with a sharp staccato, tiny asteroids of ice that soon covered the steps and turned the dark green winter grass and then melted before our eyes, a grand brushstroke of impermanence. We headed out tonight for the first Christmas grocery shop, following that up with card-writing and general holiday prep for next weekend.

I love the grey waves and the misted hint of mountains in the distance, the hunched oil slick silhouettes of cormorants on the buoys, the soft glide of seagulls in the salt-spray keeping pace with the ferry and the tall pines waiting on the other side, fresh with rain. We had a fantastic pre-Birthday outing with friends on Bainbridge today complete with cake, a Star Wars movie premiere and overfilling of laugher and heart-felt community. 

We walked into the wind, my feet soft on fallen needles, my feet hard on cold-packed earth, and left the deep exhalations of winter that swayed the brittle branches to spend the afternoon with the warm noses, the silken fur and the curled paws of cats fast asleep between worlds. With my pre-Birthday weekend over, it’s time to consider another week of work and my place in all things, before some well-deserved time off.

Where there is rain there are the crows, huddled under the grey drizzle, silent, patient, nearly invisible against the darkened clouds – the kings and queens of this shadow season, witnesses and chroniclers, vagabonds and architects. Mondays are always long days and this Monday seemed twice as long as any Monday before it as I struggle with overwhelm as a lead up to some time off.

I walked away from the setting sun with the wind at my back, the sky a moody sea lined with ruby, the air cold and pine-scented, and I sank back into the peaceful stillness of winter twilight as a Northwesterner still speechless by the way the mountain captures the light long after it has disappeared.  It is Birthday-eve and I’m having large feelings, which only seem to get larger each year until they threaten to swallow me whole.

As I looked out on the night waters, the city shimmering in reflection in the distance, the holiday lights strung from every mast, I could feel the darkness reaching its deepest depth, poised to touch bottom among the searching tentacles and mud fish, ready to be crowned with sea shells and berobed in bull kelp. It was my Birthday today, a mix of work and joy, stress and well-wishing, and a considerable amount of dinner.

The tiniest spider hung by the tiniest web near our bathroom sink, floating in the lightness of air and anchored to the solidity of countertop, suspended between states of being as Yule struck its balance. We had a fantastic evening tonight discussing the Wheel of the Year and considering what we might do with our spiritual lives in the coming cycle.

As the sun appeared on this wintery afternoon, the Flicker cried out from top of the telephone pole, speckled coat ruffled by the weather, beckoning the far distant spring ever forward. It’s the start of a five-day weekend for me and I hope to compartmentalize much in my life and sink deeply into the joys of the season and in my relationship both with my wife and with myself.

As we foraged for life in a sleeping world, each intake of breath came sharp with cold in the newborn sunshine, the blue-grey peaks rising up from the winter earth like a cathedral of rock and ice. After a long day, I escaped my work confines with no small amount of anxiety about my life to come, but content in the promise of a long weekend.

On Christmas Eve, as the night began to stir, as the juncos crept into the shelter of thorns and the warmth of dry grass, the snow began to fall, dancing in the streetlight and covering the Earth in a thick blanket of silence and reflection. We spent our Christmas Eve day in our usual traditions, family, relationship, King’s College carols and good food and hearty wine.

As the snow began to melt, tumbling from tree branches at the behest of curious crows, it revealed the criss-cross footprints of sparrows and the silent padding of cats, the scurried hop of squirrels and the long, carefree strides of humans and as I breathed in the winter air, I watched a lone seagull wandering far from his domain navigate the slush streets to secure an entire bagel and fly off towards his cold water home. Merry Christmas.

In perfect stillness, five robins perched in the peak of the tallest tree like a candelabra, flamed orange breasts puffed against the chill – a displaced vestige of spring, advance scouts measuring time until the thaw. One one of my two solo days in the Christmas portion of my holiday break, I did a bit of everything and nothing and reflected on some better ways to conceive of my life.