There was a time I would have looked at this swathe of snow and seen the imprint of something beautiful that was to come. A beauty now dormant but one that would without doubt burgeon and leaf out in spring. I would have imagined the life beneath the snow, the millions of microorganisms seething with life, beneath the soil’s surface.....
But now, I admit, I am having trouble as I understand many are, seeing the beauty here - seeing anything more than a painful glaring light and a crust of snow and frigid temperatures and feeling anything more than frozen. Struggling to believe in an eventual and inevitable thaw, when things will come to life again.
What a time of crisis and paralysis, one that seems to go on and on, and yet so many of us in the US continue to be so fortunate. To date, my greatest malaises have been a loss of hope and a wringing of hands at the state of our nation and at the state of justice in our nation, and some loneliness and longing for long, leisurely dinners with friends, where lovely meals and wines are consumed over a period of many hours. I am aware of how privileged this makes me.
So in that sense, I know I am lucky if that, in addition to these philosophical woes, some fits and starts to my small business and the closure of my husband's has been the worse of what we have endured.
In many ways I have benefited from this dormancy. I’ve allowed myself a belated maternity leave - one that as a self-employed woman with a small business in one of our countries most expensive cities, I never really got to fully enjoy. And my son, from 3.5 to 5.25 yrs of age, has been the opposite of dormant. I have had the joy of seeing him up close - unfolding and unfurling - like watching a time lapse video of a sapling leafing out in spring - albeit of a sort of sci fi sapling that never stops pushing out growth - who keeps unfurling and budding out and reaching.
And so I am looking very much to him, at him, now for hope. Trying to remember all the dormant life that will, undoubtedly and unstoppably, burgeon forth in spring. I am thinking about my participation in all this - my permaculture farm and homestead, still in its infancy, where I will grow food and flowers for both sustenance and beauty with a focus on wild, native plants. I am thinking about how to grow flowers and food in ways that will invite wildlife, disturb the land as little as possible, conserve soil, nurture the planet and my family and sustain our small businesses. I am thinking of my son, of harnessing the energy of his unstoppable growth that bucks any dormancy whatsoever, except for those 10.5-11 hours of his seemingly drunken and motionless slumber every night where a quiet and calm come down over the house like a thick blanket of snow, and he renews.
These are sad times. We must lasso what energy and hope we can. We must remember to be curious and to inquire and to think of ways to do things better. We must think of all the varied and messy life around us, how it teems on within the frozen earth as steadily as the peepers in my wetlands in spring, of the chorus of crickets in summer - even if frozen into silence now.
