Tag Archives: winter

Richest Man In Town

Snowy Sunrise

A nod to Frank Capra and his Christmas masterpiece, It’s A Wonderful Life.
When a simple, joyful life becomes a yoke, then subsequently is befallen with disaster, George Bailey looks around the fixer-upper he, his wife and three children occupy, and can see only his disappointments and shortcomings and failures.
Restless and angry, he lashes out.
“Why do we live in this drafty old barn? Why do we have all these kids?”

This line became a running gag between my wife and I, surviving some impressive winters in our own “drafty old barn”, The Ark of Engleville. It’s as big and as old and indeed as drafty as that home in the movie. Each year I go about sealing cracks and stuffing holes and promising to do better next year. Still, when I lean into the kitchen window and a slight breeze arises from between the sashes, I am greeted with the wonderful aromas of the world outside this portal. The scent of the wind and snow, the smell of 115-year-old clapboard siding, hints of human inhabitance; smoke from a wood fire. It is invigorating and nostalgic and genuine all at once, and never does the thought enter in that this is not an economical window.

But this post is not about the Ark or windows. It’s not really about the movie, either. It’s about perspective. In the story of George Bailey, he feels all is lost from his perspective when things go wrong at his family business. He already lived with the sense that he had sacrificed his worldly hopes and dreams to care for the institution founded by his father and uncle. He is young in the grand scheme of things, with school-aged children at home, and many years to face of toiling away as an everyman at an everyday job.
He accuses a prominent businessman, Mr. Potter, of being “a warped, frustrated old man.”, and when things turn bad, his words are echoed back to him.
“And what are you now, but a warped, frustrated young man?”

I’ll not spoil the movie for you with too much detail, in the event you haven’t seen it. Suffice to say that after a long personal trial of himself, George realizes the greatest gifts in his life did not come from globetrotting escapades or success in business or social prominence and status symbols. He sees the true and real value in his life; having a father that took pride in his children, not his income; saving his brother from drowning when they were young boys; friends and a community that respected and revered him because of his character and kindness and generous nature; his wife, his children.

The contrast is Mr. Potter, an aging bachelor whose only “children” are the myriad business holdings he owns. He is painted as selfish and miserly, always looking to take advantage of others for his own monetary gain. Indeed, he is without a doubt the richest man in Bedford Falls, the fictional location of the tale.

The story involves a tremendous financial disaster that occurs in the family business, one the family does not have the resources to solve. George is faced with bankruptcy, and possibly a jail sentence for embezzlement. When, after the trials of the story, he puts things into perspective, he sees that his life is filled with precious and beautiful things, and is worth the living even under dire circumstances. Friends and community rally to raise the funds needed, and in the final scene, George’s brother (the one whose life he saved as a child) raises a glass to toast him. While Harry may be referring to the money raised in support of the family business, we know George is thinking about more important things for which he is supremely grateful. His brother; his wife and children; his mother; his uncle Billy; this little town with a big heart, an endless stream of friends.

“To my big brother George,” Harry proclaims, “the richest man in town.”

Here in Engleville, the sun is just setting now. The beauty of December’s snow has been melted away by the day’s rain. The wind is up, and that means I need to run around now and pull closed the heavy drapes in the parlor and at the front “coffin” doors, stuff the draft stopper tightly against the south porch door, clean the pellet stove to fire it for the night. I’m glad it’s above freezing because I have neglected to plug in the heat tape in the cellar to keep the water pump switch from freezing. I left the storm windows out for the Thanksgiving company’s benefit, and the single pane view is nice, albeit chilly.

I’m closing curtains and turning up gas heaters and asking the dog and my wife’s spirit and this ancient Ark: “Why do we live in this drafty old barn?”

A smile stretches across my face as a tear wells in my eye.

I know damn well why I live in this giant old Victorian Ark with its giant old windows and its sagging floors and crumbling foundation.

It is my mansion.

And I am the richest man in Engleville.

Take care and keep in touch.

Paz

I Woke In May

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I woke in May,
From a dream-like state and winter grey.
Took down crepes and buntings black
To pack them carefully away.
No doubt they’ll hang for me one day.

And here is May,
To usher this vague time along.
Sunshine knocks at windowpanes
And newborn flowers line the lanes.
Birds call out life’s sweet song.

I have known many Mays
Though dates and years slip my mind,
I recall one of every kind;
A newborn baby at half a year,
The first spring we were living here.

Mary’s birthday was in May.
Now no other claims that month
That I know of, anyway.
Too many to remember, and scattered, in the clan.
Too many for one old and scattered man.

I’m not sure how I got to May
This year, I must say.
January is a blur.
I’m certain February occurred.
Of March and April, I can’t speak a word.

The ticking clock I once vowed to destroy
Is now the tool at my employ.
For all the modern medical arts,
Drugs and x-rays, treatments and charts,
None claim the power to heal broken hearts.

Life imposes tariffs on the soul and on the mind,
When least expected or ready yet,
With no regard for season, rhyme or reason.
Each year the tax rate rises
As my age does, I regret.

But May! O! May!
What new blooms have you today?
Taxes paid and winter past,
Lilac perfumes fill the heart,
To life, again, the pendulum swings,
As the greening cottonwoods sway.

Take care and keep in touch.

Paz

Winter, old friend.

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Winter and I have known one another for a very, very long time. Granted, I don’t remember the first few years, being a baby and all, but I’m sure she does. In the same way my mother did. Knew every moment of my life from before my first breath. Gone more than fifteen years now, I am continually amazed at a love that has lasted much longer than a lifetime. Thoughts and remembrances of her awaken me like fragrances brought on the dancing breeze. The only other Earthbound soul with me from the day I was born left this world last year on Labor Day. My father and I had a singular way at goodbye, at which we would say “Don’t forget that I love you.” I never shall forget, Dad, as Mom has shown me. We don’t forget. Now here it is mid-January, right between their birthdays. His on the eleventh, hers the twenty-eighth. My daughter Miranda celebrated hers on the twenty-third.

She received a bouquet of flowers, the first time I’ve sent such a thing. There is, mixed up in this old mind, a certain bank. A pay-it-forward for the past sort of thing. It is born of the voices of my dear departed. When it comes to gifting, they lean over my shoulder as I open my precious Jack Benny wallet, and they whisper, quite insistently.
“Think of all the money you no longer spend on me. Christmases and birthdays and Fathers’ Days and Mothers’ Days.”
One has the outright audacity to remind me how he did not live long enough to gift me grandchildren bearing his likeness.
“All those Christmas presents…” he says.
As brutally direct as these ghosts may be, I cannot deny their logic. And so, this winter, this January, finds me sending a gaudy and over-priced vase of flowers with a card that reads simply “Happy Birthday Miranda. I love you. Dad.”
This marks the first birthday, the first winter, the first January since 1975 that is not celebrated with her mother.

From the loss of my father on Labor Day, we rode a roller coaster through our last fall together. For the first in thirty-five years, the kitchen of The Ark was not bustling and brimming with family and friends for Thanksgiving. My wife and I ate Thanksgiving dinner together in her hospital room. A homemade dinner, made and delivered thirty miles by our youngest child.
Alone in The Ark, I cut a Christmas tree, and adorned it with lights as the dog and cat looked on. I decorated for the holidays, not as much as a regular year, and hoped she would be home for Christmas. My children’s consternations were allayed with guarded phrases.
“Should the worst come to pass, it’s important, for the grandchildren, for my own children, maybe for me, too. It’s important to know that even when someone dies there still remains all the rest that we have come to know. Christmas will still come, and New Year’s Day. Pop Pop will still be here, still be Pop Pop, and The Ark will stand, upholding its ‘Holiday House’ traditions.”
Winters and Januaries, birthdays, springs and summers will arrive on schedule. We will continue to live and love and grow together, now without our dear “Mam”.

She left us just ten days before Christmas. She had finished most of her shopping before her hospitalization November first. She finished the rest on her laptop from her hospital bed. It was an oddly warm sensation as we opened the gifts she’d chosen. A timely reminder that love perseveres beyond the grave. A curiously bittersweet softening of our parting, as if she knew it would be at such a difficult time of the year.

And now there is my beloved winter. My welcome old friend January. There could be no better time to grieve, to mourn, to heal. A time when drawing the drapes and hunkering down is a normal pastime. Days like today; seven degrees, with wind chill: one. A foot of snow covers the ranch, and long, slender crystal icicles hang from the eaves. Yesterday was spent sipping coffee on the couch, watching birds at the feeders.
I thought I might begin to move and breathe a little. Not just going through the motions of life like the last three months, but looking for me, tossed aside in a closet somewhere during this tempestuous time. I might paint again, or fiddle with photography. Or write.

Okay, so if I’m not up to that yet, maybe watching birds. Play a few episodes of Sergeant Preston Of The Yukon on the TV. I moved the easel three times. Stared repeatedly at the unfinished canvas. The camera remained at rest beside the kitchen window. I pulled my journal from the chifforobe for the first time in months, but it sat on the coffee table, undisturbed all day. I played Sergeant Preston in the background while I performed the Saturday weekly cleaning of the pellet stove. Then shut the TV off.

Today, I raised the blinds and January leaped in through my window, cupped my face in her sunny and cool hands, and said, quietly and gently, “Good morning, old friend.”
A blanket of pristine snow glittered with diamonds under a bright, clear blue Winter sky.
And I opened my journal, and wrote this.

I see the temperature has risen to three degrees, with wind chill. Time to suit up and take the dog for a snowshoe hike.

Or maybe the dog is just an excuse.

For a long overdue and sorely needed visit with a very, very old friend.

Take care and keep in touch.

Paz

The Game Of Life

Budding Season

A Changing World

5 Replies

March Sunset On The Ranch

As the spring equinox arrives, it brings to a close one season of changes, and escorts in yet another. Winter is not boring. One day is filled with sunshine and crisp, clear air, the next is dark and gray and blowing and ever-so-cold. Like snowflakes, no two winter days are identical.

Snow falls and piles up, mounded by the plow, piled by the shovel. We embrace its uniqueness, especially when new, as it is each year, each snowstorm, each blizzard. We frolic in it, throw it at one another, photograph it as if we’d never seen it before. We lace up boots and strap on snow shoes and skis, harness the dog and don the jorring belt. We marvel at the way it paints the trees, the hillsides and meadows, the mountains in the distance.

In between, the snow will fade. It gets thinner and thinner, some bare patches may be seen. Just when you think it’s safe to put away the snow shovel, a late March blizzard will dump 30 inches of snow on us. There will be in there somewhere an ice storm, which coats everything in our natural world with a glaze of glass.

The ponds evolve daily, our visual barometer of the season and calendar of change. First a small opening appears in the center of the ice. The next day it is twice the size. A week later, ice rims the edges of ponds, and creeks cascade over ice-covered rocks.

Last Snow Walk

Bowmaker Ice-Off

Icy Stream

Avenue Of The Pines

Fleeing Snow

Between Seasons

Snowpile Reserve

March Blizzard

Dawn Fliers

Ice Storm

Ice Off On West Creek

Now spring brings another season of change. Here the tulips are popping up through the snow-matted south lawn. We spy red-winged blackbirds and grackles, harbingers of summer. Each day is a guessing game. Do I wear the longjohns? Do I bring the “winter” coat? One day we swear winter is still upon us, and the next we revel in temperatures that call to mind days in May, lilacs and dandelions. Regulating the heat in the Ark can be a challenge. The pellet stove drives off the 34 degree F chill driven by the wind. Then by noon it is 82 degrees F in the kitchen. Pellet stove off. Doors flung open. Other days seem mild, and we’ll leave the wood stove on standby, use the gas heaters, and in the evening we flip a coin to decide if it’s cold enough to warrant a fire.

The driveway goes from a solid sheet of glacier to a massive mud bog, complete with a sinkhole in the middle big enough to swallow small pets. The lawn changes from a pristine field of white carpet to a mess of sticks and leaves and such, previously hidden beneath snow. The sump pump in the basement works tirelessly, pretends it’s a bilge pump on the Titanic.

There will be one more round of big changes as spring barrels its way into our world. Leaf buds on trees, crocuses on the ground, orioles in the air. The first tulips, the first hummingbird.

By comparison, summer can be a bit boring. A little monotonous. Sure, we can watch the peas growing in, we can start cutting hay in June and watch for the next round. We can look forward to three days at the lake. But besides that, it’s pretty much the same each day. Green grass and green leaves and flowers of every color and profusions of growth in all directions. Birds of every kind. Well, I may not see a dark-eyed Junco again until November.

I will bear it only because I know, like all things in this universe, it is fleeting and temporary.

Soon enough, with some patience, my dear friend August will start the first hints. Hints of change. Pumpkins getting large, morning glories climbing.

And I will be glad the boring sunshiny summer is behind us, and I can again be entertained by a changing world.

Take care and keep in touch,

Paz

Three-In-One Mornings

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The depth of winter is one of my favorite parts of the year.

Sure, it can be cold and there can be plenty of snow. Both those things are great assets of the winter. The former keeps bugs at bay, and the latter paints the world in pristine white.

Some folks shoot river rapids in a kayak for the thrill of it. Some folks climb huge mountains past the timberline in grueling conditions. Some folks will jump out of a helicopter to ski and snowboard in the most isolated places. For me, there is the challenge of winter. Not just surviving, but thriving. To scoff at temperatures in single digits, and equally dismiss double-digit winds. To wrap in layer upon layer then don snowshoes for a leisurely walk. To stand atop Nishan Hill and be shaken like a sapling by the winds of winter.

Snowy Sunrise

One of my favorite things about winter is the morning commute. In winter, it’s dark when I rise. There’s something about moving about a kitchen quietly, letting the dog out, putting on the pot of coffee when it is still night outside. It’s a special time of night, too. Early night still sees traffic and lights on in living rooms. Late night has its own feel. Third-shifters bound for work, folks at The Snack Store mopping up to close. At this pre-dawn hour, it is much quieter. Only the snow plow rumbles down Engleville Road, and The Snack Store hasn’t turned on the lights yet.

Sassy June wants to go on the long dog run beside the woods, and I cross the driveway to fulfill her wishes. The only illumination is the soft incandescent glow of the cabana lights, casting a yellow hue on the snow. I turn to go in and I am stopped in my tracks by the Milky Way, stretching from the southwest to the northeast across a crystal-clear frozen sky. I stand and stare and marvel at this beauty until the snow creeps into my slippers and I’m reminded I am not wearing a coat.

Eagles In Snow

Dog in, pellet stove fed, Thermos filled, and it’s time to leave. Goodbyes and lights out, and The Ark returns to nighttime as Juney climbs onto my reading chair to go back to bed. Headlights on, three rabbits are startled and dash for the hedgerow. Pulling out, I pause to look back, and call to my angel puppy to join me on the drive. He’ll be gone four years this July, but I think of him every day. I say “Good morning, angel puppy.” to his grave, tell him there’s plenty of room in the car for a ghost. The dog’s grave, the silhouetted sugar maples and the sleeping home fade in the rear view mirror as I grudgingly depart my favorite place on the planet.

Driving in the dark. Most of the world is relegated to a cone of light directly in front of the Fun Bus. There is just enough breadth in the headlights’ beam to light the sides of the road, where my eyes keep constant watch for animals of all kinds. Many critters come out only at night, and others will take advantage of the darkness when they can. Whitetail deer are the main threat, as they move quickly and weigh as much as a man. The “Deer Watch” light is always on in my brain whenever we traverse dark roads. Snow illuminated by the headlights is entrancing, magical.

The night sky is not black. It is a deep, glowing blue. Deeper than blue, maybe. Countless stars fill the heavens, and there are often sightings of our cosmic neighbors, the fellow planets of our solar system. I’ve seen quite a few meteors while driving in the night. The moon dances in and out of mornings. Sometimes high, sometimes low, sometimes large and sometimes small, and sometimes none at all. Sometimes it will back light clouds in the sky, and cast warm orange tones on them. Sometimes it is a bright full ball that shines like a beacon, casting deep shadows on the snow like a Hollywood “day for night” shot.

It is an exclusive club this early on the road. Milk tankers haul from dairy farm to dairy farm, heading eventually to the Midland Farms dairy plant, or the Dairylea Co-Op. Farmers are out at all times. I’m likely to see a manure spreader plodding along the side of the road, headed for the entrance to the cornfield. I’ve seen harvesters cutting corn under the lights at seven and eight o’clock at night, but it seems only manure spreaders are allowed before dawn, with the exception of Agway’s huge ag trucks hauling lime to the fields in April and May. Their oversized balloon tires making them bounce as they ply the pavement. We may see a sheriff’s deputy or a State Police cruiser, winding up their shift, heading home to bed soon. Tractor trailers pull out of the distribution center east of the village, bound for stores across the area.

Madrugada

Somewhere along U.S. Highway 20, eastbound, the edge of the night sky begins to brighten. Deep indigo fades to pale blue. In Spanish, the word “madrugada” is used to describe this “time between night and morning”. Birds are waking now, as are people in their homes. Lights come on in houses, and a few more cars join the parade. The first yellow school bus may be seen, heading for the start of the route.

Now we can peer into the fields and see wild turkeys, the occasional coyote may streak past, galloping full speed to the safety of the woods. The monotone world of night begins to see its first hues of the day. The sky becomes brighter blue, displays wisps and ribbons of white clouds. The earliest hints of the sun begin to tone the sky in orange or pink or deep red. Thanks to the snow cover, we can see farm animals silhouetted in fields, cows, horses, goats, sheep.

Somewhere between Carlisle and Sloansville, the big red ball will crest the horizon. Twice a year it sits dead center in the highway as I drive due east. First, the clouds at the edge of the sky will alight, ablaze in red. Then the atomic fireball climbs over the end of the Earth, and I am floodlighted by a blinding beam. Now all the world is red. The sky and the snow, the road and the trees and even the sheep and the goats. Some days, if there’s heavy cloud cover, we will be denied this display. When storm clouds blanket our world, and snowflakes fly.

Dawn Buck

Now we catch the tardy. Those who would be abed by dawn, caught by the sun. A young fisher streaks his way across the corn stubble, dashing for the Schoharie Creek. A possum hastens, as best a possum can hasten, which is not too hasty, and I brake for the wildlife crosswalk. An owl of the night heads for the roosting tree. Birds seem to multiply with the increasing light, and now great flocks of Canada Geese, sometimes Snow Geese, take to the sky with a raucous clatter. After February, after hibernation season, we may smell the skunk even if we don’t see it.

Fisher At Sunrise

I stop just past the bridge over the Schoharie, stunned by the sunrise bleeding through the fog, shadowy arms of trees contrasted against the brilliant light. I have a three minute window to shoot this photo before the Earth moves beneath me and the moment and image pass. Climbing the on-ramp to Interstate 88, beside the field where I shot fifty frames of a mother coyote on the hunt, the rich flatlands stretch out over my right shoulder. The sun is pouring down between ridges, and lights the village of Schoharie with a bright beam. Up, up, up the long draw I climb. Up out of the Schoharie Valley, crossing the ridge, parallel to the Mohawk River Valley, and on into the Hudson River watershed. As I settle onto the flat stretch of highway, the full sun leaps up from the horizon, and the lights come on for a shiny new day.

Sunrise Over Corn

Now it is truly dawn, and the whole world seems to notice. There are more cars on the road, and school buses on the secondaries, red lights flashing. Cawing crows and ravens fly about, and a bald eagle is sighted over the swamp. This is where I saw the bear a number of years ago, trotting out from the edge of the woods, startled to find a road before him. The sky holds one show after another, and I must tell myself I can’t stop and shoot more pictures. I already spent ten minutes by the creek shooting the fisher and the trees in the golden sunrise, and each minute’s delay takes from my employer’s time.

Bus Stop

The light angles steeply into secret holds in the woods, casts a copper glow on everything. In a matter of minutes it will rise up out of the morning show. It will burn off the dramatic fog. It will drive the fishers and possums into their daylight quarters, and rise into the blue sky until this magical time, too, passes, and we are drenched in daylight.

As spring nears, the captivating three-in-one mornings become a thing of the winter past. I’ll rise as the sun knocks at my kitchen window, and in summer the light will stretch out to nine o’clock. Now patience is required. I will have a dozen more three-in-one mornings, stolen in short stints at campsites on a remote lakeshore, or garnered as part of the pre-dawn fishing excursion on Sundays. Then I must wait. For August. Then September. The sun centers itself on U.S. Highway 20 again, and while the rest of the world begins preparing for winter, I drive easterly, a foolish grin on my face, looking like the village idiot.

And I will revel in the darkness that begins my favorite season, and eagerly anticipate another quarter-year immersed in the magic of three-in-one mornings.

Take care and keep in touch.

Paz

After The Rush

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Edge Of Night

The Christmas tree beat a hasty retreat this year, as it had dried out considerably and begun to drop needles by the branchful. The furniture has been restored to its pre-tree positions. The annual tradition of New Year’s Eve At Pop Pop’s was a grand success, and the kitchen floor became inundated with marvelous sparkling confetti. The ball dropped in Times Square, and just like that another year ended. We started the New Year with another tradition: double-team vacuuming.

Now this weekend, finally, I will catch up to the tide of the paper calendar. I will lovingly yet grudgingly take down the big C-9 lights and their garland from the arches of the front porch. I will carry boxes of remaining decorations upstairs and scratch my head at the condition of the holiday closet, looking like a post-Christmas bargain-basement sale aftermath. I will walk through the house a dozen times scanning for red & green, silver & gold, and I will still miss a few Christmas-y items that will be noticed later in January.

And then—quiet.

Though most of the snow has faded in the past couple of weeks, we don’t doubt that Miss Winter is still encamped. The dog’s water dish remains frozen, and the dog bones frozen to the ground in the driveway. Opening the door to let the cat in or the dog out results in a blast of icy air, making us quickly move the six feet to the front of the wood stove to recover. Windows are dressed in the raiment of the season, heavy drapes drawn closed at sunset. Doors sport draft stoppers, and the down ticks come out for the beds.

Closed windows and doors, drapes and draft stoppers seal us into our winter haven. The steady purr of the motors of the pellet stove provides a background noise, the television playing its counter-melody. And this is the soundtrack of real winter. The balance of days not filled with Jack-o-lanterns, festive pumpkin pies, turkeys and trees and gifts and Times Square. Now, as sunsets hover not long after four o’clock, we may cast our eyes to Siberia, and watch Doctor Zhivago as the ice paints our windowpanes to look like the ones he peers through.

Outside, in the Great Wonder, few sounds disturb Sassy June and I as we traverse our trails, our most familiar and beloved paths. Scrunch-scrunch of snowshoes. The wind in the pines. The sweet and spirited song of the tiny chickadee. We may chance to hear a chainsaw across the glen, or perhaps the sound of a couple of snowmobilers riding up the abandoned rail bed, over the hill, past our Wonder Woods.

In the pine stands now, hundreds of robins will perch at sunset, root around and roost there. We ponder their behavior. Aren’t they supposed to hide until spring? How will we know when spring has truly arrived if the robins remain through the winter? They must be late in their trek. Everything has been a step behind this season, and we all blame it on a late Thanksgiving. I’m not sure how the robins found out about it, but the Canada Geese appear to be taking their time as well. One could hope this would mean the rest of our winter may be mild. Corollaries of previous years indicate, in fact, the birds may anticipate a late spring.

And that would be agreeable to Sassy June and I. This next stretch of time is not metered out for holiday parties and days spent decorating (or undecorating), not punctuated and perforated by dinner at daughter’s or the Christmas Bird Count. These few and precious weeks ahead represent our time to have the Great Wonder, The Magic, the Wonder Woods all to ourselves. No mowing required, nor the time spent doing so. No distractions take from our time. No lazy river and a boat that wants to sail. No summer ponds filled with lunker largemouths. No invitations to pool parties or patios. No bugs.

Just a snow-covered trail, a man, and a dog. Woods we can see through, without those pesky leaves. Icy gusts that keep others at bay. Gold and purple sunsets.

We bask now in the glory of true, quiet winter. After the rush and before the spring. We’ll be out there in it, Sassy and I.

You come, too.

Sassy on the Widowmaker

Take care and keep in touch,

Paz

Seeing Season

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Rolling along into December, we’re less than two weeks from the pivot point, the winter solstice. Henceforth, days begin to grow longer. Winter walks are often drawn to a close as the sun approaches the horizon, and as we doff our boots and harnesses (depending on species), we note that it is hardly past four o’clock!

Ryan and I struck out Saturday for a snow shoe hike around a short trail not far from home. I related to him how I call this stretch of winter “The Seeing Season”. While pine stands remain impenetrable, deciduous trees ditch their leaves, and we can see so much that is blocked from view for half the year. We had a fresh snowfall recently, and this gave us many interesting and beautiful sights to behold. The sun danced in and out of sight between falling snowflakes. We stopped at the lean-to for coffee.

“Oh, I have coffee!” I said, realizing I left the full Thermos in the truck.

Ryan produced two ceramic mugs from his pack, and poured steaming black coffee in each.

“It’s not about having coffee, Dad.” he said as he brushed a foot of snow off the picnic table, and stepped up onto the floor of the lean-to. “It’s about doing this.”

I let the this of this moment engulf me, appreciative of the reminder from my fellow outdoorsman and armchair philosopher. The coffee was good, too.

Trail Buddy

Cat Tails

Winter’s Rose

Snowfall

Bird Art

Hangers-on

Not-about-coffee Break

Leafy Pool

Unbroken Trail

Overwhelmed

Snow-capped Tree Ears

Sun And Snow

Back at the ranch, I plowed the snow from the driveway. Not half-way through December and the snow banks are five feet high already. A warm spell forecast will knock them down a bit.

The big C-9 lights are up on the arches of the front porch, and the little Lantern Bear has donned a Santa hat. Inside, rooms become inundated with reds and greens. Table runners and tablecloths and place mats in themes of Christmas. The stockings are hung in the parlor. On Monday, son-in-law Kenyon would deliver the tree, and our late start on the holiday is well underway.

Merry Christmas!

Here’s hoping you get a chance to get out in the seeing season. If you don’t have snow, come on up. We have more than enough to spare.

Take care and keep in touch,

Paz

The Ark: Windows

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From My Window

All of the windows in my 113 year old farmhouse are original, except for the one new triple-track aluminum deal in the kitchen that looks out onto the driveway. Much of the glass is original, too. “Albany glass” they call it around here, but in other parts of the country it probably has other names, or perhaps the name of the town where the glass factory stood. The old glass has ripples in it, actual wrinkles you can feel with your fingers as they pass over the otherwise smooth glass. And bubbles. In some places, quite a few tiny air bubbles, and in other places, individual larger ones. I’ve had to replace a few panes of glass during my 34-year tenure caring for the Ark. It always makes my heart ache a little when I must break up and throw away this antique glass.

The lifting and latching of the windows brings a mixed bag of the original workings. A single spring-loaded latch is in the center of each lower sash. On some windows, the ancient cast iron pieces within have cracked and broken off, and the latch does nothing at all. These windows get propped open with retired curtain rods. On a few of the windows, the latches still work. Most probably had window weights concealed within the window frame. A rounded length of iron about the diameter of a cigar, usually about a foot long. These were originally attached by sash cord, long since decayed within its wood confines. The window weight would offer a counterbalance, an assist to lift the window as well as a resistance to slow the sash’s descent.

They are as inefficient as one would expect an original 1906 window to be. Pretty sure I have actually seen tiny crystals of snow driven through them in the height of a winter’s blizzard. In the frozen season, condensation on the inside of the windows often freezes on the glass. Whenever we see this, we call it “Zhivago glass”, as it reminds us of the scenes in “Dr. Zhivago”, when he and his charges are holed up in Siberia. Giving it ringing names and associating it with the stark beauty shown in the movies helps distract us from the fact that the window is no better than the one Zhivago looked through in 1890.

Juney

The windows are large and ornate. Houses don’t have large and ornate windows anymore, just vinyl rectangles. The tops of the windows out front are rounded. 10 round-top double-sash windows frame the coffin doors, with two round-top lights of its own. (“Coffin doors” refer to the main entrance at the front of the house. ((We call that “the dooryard” around here)). One door is used most of the time, the one with the doorknob. The other side of the double door was intended to be opened to bring a coffin into and out of the house. When it was built, this is the way funerals were done in the sticks.)

We had a sales person call on us to pitch us custom vinyl replacement windows. His first shock was the sheer number. For living spaces alone (excluding the “attic” windows) there were 18 of them. He measured and calculated. Were we sure we wanted them the same size? “100 united inches” I think was the term. Surely we would want a standard, smaller vinyl rectangle? Less expensive and more energy efficient. He choked a little when quoting the price (more than twenty years ago) at $18,000!

Okay, last thing, window guy. You know your custom windows that are made-to-order to fit the openings in my home? Well, will the ten out front have the same rounded tops? Well, not exactly, window guy says. We could fashion a mask for the outside that evokes the shape of the round top. Nope. Stop right there.

The Coffin Doors

There is a tremendous beauty in these windows. Like most things I love, their inherent beauty is the attractant. Not efficiency. In the fall, I make my rounds to each one. A couple of screws jammed in the sides will hold the lower sash tightly against the upper. Then rope caulk is applied to the gap. In the spring, I visit each again, removing the caulk and the screws. Flinging them open, however briefly, symbolically putting winter to bed.

I could have had eighteen modern, efficient vinyl rectangles in these places. A lower heat bill. No need for rope caulk.

In June I will go upstairs and open the front and back windows in the center hall. This is the official start of summer for me. Breezes will move through, and birdsong. And the smell of the rain, and the sound of the neighbor’s birthday party across the road. The rumbling of summer thunderstorms, the voice of the wind in the leaves of the great maple trees which tower over the two-story house. In spring, the sound of the robin leaping from the nest it has built atop the window frame. In August, the smell of the third cutting of hay, drying in the field adjacent. The smell of the diesel tractor crawling up the road with a wagon of hay bales stacked impossibly high. The sound of lawn mowers and dirt bikes and dogs barking.

Windows go both ways

In the peak of the summer heat I will go upstairs to fetch something. At the top of the stairs I am met with a unique fragrance. It is the smell of a very old house. Century-old wood. Horse-hair plaster over hand-cut lath. Ancient wallpapers. It smells of all the things it has always smelled like, and not unlike the attic of my parents old farmhouse. I can’t know how much longer I will be in this house, or in this world. But I know in the meantime I will delight in that old familiar smell of an old, old house owned by old people. Unchanged but for those few places where it was deemed absolutely necessary. And my kids and grandkids will share this experience. This smell. This old Ark.

And until I go, you will not smell vinyl. You may be a little chilly in the winter. And you can look out at ancient trees which are as old as the wavy, bubble-filled glass you are looking through.

Take care, and keep in touch.

Pazlo

	Pazlo on Hermit’s Journal
	rabbitpatchdiary.com on Hermit’s Journal
	Pazlo on Summer Place
	Pazlo on Summer Place
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Life In Engleville

Seeking Wonder In Every Day

Tag Archives: winter

Richest Man In Town

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Winter, old friend.

The Game Of Life

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A Changing World

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After The Rush

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The Ark: Windows