Hibernate. Thaw. Wake.

This winter I have hibernated. More than any other time in my life. I have rested, recharged. I have run a bit in the cold, ventured out, but largely stayed inside. Read. Binge-watched. Thought. Felt. Connected. Being between jobs lent itself to hibernating. So did having time on my own every other weekend. I am not sure I dig hibernating, but somehow it felt necessary.

Hibernating is temporary. After the slumber, comes the waking up. This winter has been cold. Frozen. Snow has stuck around for a time to finish off February. Now comes the thaw. Snow abates, the ground finds the sun again. Rebirth. Spring brings to life.

I wake to abundance. Baskin-Robbins has nothing on the flavors in my life. A new job. Two beautiful girls each with winter birthdays starting lacrosse season. Inspiration to fill a notebook everyday for two months and counting, since the beginning of the year. Blue eyes, open to see themselves looking back. Bluebirds of happiness.

This is the first winter I haven't lived in or on the edge of town. I've dialed in on birds. I've been overrun with Blue Jays and Cardinals; I've noticed Eastern Bluebirds for maybe the first time; I've had several remarkable Bald Eagle encounters. The girls and I watched a Red-Bellied Woodpecker show a handful of Blue Jays what time it was at our tree-hanging feeder, then saw one hanging on the side of the road going to school a day or two later.

A few nights ago, we stopped the car in the road to watch a Red-Tailed Hawk go from lane to tree for a perch. This morning, I watched from the kitchen sink as the same type of hawk changed trees along the lane. I geek out by grabbing my Audubon Mid-Atlantic Field Guide and feel giddy looking up birds. Even Cobain knew there was something to "an illustrated book about birds."

And from time to time I grab "Animal Speak," to see what Ted Andrews has to say about a new bird popping around repeatedly. How about the woodpecker, Ted?

The red found in the head area of any woodpecker reflects stimulation of the mental activities... It reflects a stimulation and wakening of new mental faculties... it will become increasingly important for you to follow your own unique rhythms and flight... When woodpecker comes into your life, it indicates that the foundation is there. It is now safe to follow your own rhythms.

 And the Red-Tailed Hawk?

This powerful bird can awaken visionary power and lead you to your life purpose. It is the messenger bird, and wherever it shows up, pay attention. There is a message coming... This bird is the catalyst, stimulating hope and new ideas. It reflects a need to be open to the new or shows you ways that you may help teach others to be open to the new.

I'm not calling Andrews and his animal speak gospel. But I find it interesting, illuminating, and in many cases spot on with a message inserted seemingly right where and when one seems to be speaking itself in other ways into life. Maybe the birds are onto something.

In the meantime, winter is wrapping up. Hibernation is coming to an end. The yard thaws. And it is time to wake up.

Cold Bones

Cold bones shake the soul awake. They toughen the skin.

Cold bones make a warm house happier. They make sweat from a winter run better earned than money.

Cold bones dig down jackets and newbie hats. They are a fan of thermos coffee on the sidelines of a kids' game.

Cold bones seek out bonfires and bourbon's bite. Stout beer is made for cold bones.

Adventures are made up largely of cold bones and innovation and shelter owe their lives to cold bones.

Mountains are not climbed without cold bones and no deer stand or duck blind can tell a story without cold bones.

In the summer, I wake up, walk outside and feel no different. Life is unchanged. Perspective still groggy.

In the winter, cold bones remind me I am alive.

"And miles to go before I sleep"

Robert Frost and I don't talk much. He's a bit old school and rhymey for my taste. A funny thing though, when a poet reaches out of your memory, out of your subconscious, to chat.

I've had Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" in my head for a number of months now. Particularly the last stanza:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I hear Frost speaking in the deep, Southern drawl or Mr. Chew, our 10th grade English teacher at St. James. Mr. Chew was also our cross country coach, who got us out running through the woods, usually before they were snowy, and there wasn't much stopping going on.

Frost's narrator stops to chill, take in a scene, a moment, where most folks en route keep cranking. But there was something more going on. Maybe Frost-the-narrator (FTN) is tired, fed up with work, with bills, with all the shit he's got to do. The moment of hesitation presents something else. Dude, fu** it, what if I just chill here and take this in. For good?

The temptation is there, "the woods are lovely, dark and deep." But FTN doesn't give himself more than the passing thought. Nah, man, "I've got promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep." I got shit to do.

Let's face it, we've got days, maybe weeks-months-years where the temptation of the snowy woods is there. It's funny though, how often I hear Mr. Chew as FTN, out of the blue with those last three lines, "But I've got promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep."

So this fall and winter, I've had Frost and Chew speaking up from memory, from subconscious, saying hey. And then on New Year's Day, as we're taking out Christmas decorations down, Robin pulls down a blackboard she writes a new seasonal message on every couple months. She wipes the old "Merry Christmas" off. She says:

What if I put the first verse of Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," on the board?

I've never mentioned Frost, or Mr. Chew, or that poem to her. Voices, speaking from the past. Our past, for us to hear. If we listen.

That would be cool, hon.

So I leave you with Frost's whole poem. You can say it out loud, in a deep Southern drawl if you want.

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.  

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.  

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

The Tree, tending to

 
I suck at sitting still. I can sit, but the still part, I've gotta work on. My mind is flighty, unmoored.

In this respect, being sick this past week, and not running, has given me something I had fallen out of touch with. I dusted off the mat and got back to yoga. Note to self: you get stiff quick if you don't put in some time.

And hitting a bit of the mental immersion back into practice, I read a bit of Patanjali's Yoga Sutra. I've always gleaned a lot from that honed style of writing, from The Bhagavad Gita, The Dhammapada, where you are reading fragments, distilled to the fewest words and simple cadence. In the introduction to the Yoga Sutra, Mark Whitwell talks about the "Sutra" style like this:

The style known as Sutra, that which has few words, yet is free from ambiguity, full of essence, universal in context and affirmative.

And with further study and practice, "the message takes on a deeper resonance and becomes more relevant, more revealing."

And that's sort of it. The cats who write like that, whether poetry, aphorism, sutra--few words, full of essence, universal in context, more relevant and revealing upon further reading--those are the folks I come back to.

Balance and patience don't come easy for me. But I also recognize how much trying to incorporate or practice each gives back to me. This time of year, cold but not enough snow to have fun in, too cold to dig being outside, I see photos of trails, of mountains, of singletrack through the woods, and I want to be there.

But, still being a new year, I also think about all the shit that I've left untended. That I've been meaning to get to, work on, read, what-have-you. One of those things for me is a book I'd forgotten about, John Fowles's The Tree, which kept getting bumped for something else, but is all those things I dig about reading and I settled into this morning. It could be one of those ass pocket of wonder books. We'll see.

Another one of those things is yoga. And as Patanjali says, "Yoga is the resolution of the agitations of the mind." I could use a little of that.

The other stuff? Well, I'm working on a list. I'll get back to you on that.

Saturday Morning

Present

I can see out two windows from my favorite seat in the house,
the corner of a room we put laminate flooring in,
on the corner of a couch with a reading light.

It is generally dark, between 4:30 and 6am, winter, and
there is steam rising off a cup of coffee in one hand
with a book in the other. I'm the only one up and there is
a short stack of books on a makeshift bench of a coffee table.

The books determine the view out the windows. They propel
the mind, the couch, the house, often times so much that
I have to put them down, and the coffee,
and pick up a notebook and pen and scribble
thoughts that I didn't have yesterday or this morning
when I woke up and that I won't have tomorrow
or any other time but right now.

Past

This morning it is light out. Anna is up with me, bouncing back
and forth between writing or working in her reading practice books
and creating a tyrannical funhouse world for the cats.

"When did Pop die?" she asks, remembering my grandfather
who died a couple years ago.

Her memory of him is as an old man with a great heart and laugh
who couldn't see or hear or walk well.

My memories of him span thirty-some years--as chauffeur,
as recovered alcoholic, as lover of the Baltimore Colts and
the Evening Sun paper and Robert Service poetry.

I remember him with me on the ice of Town Creek in Oxford,
with most of the town after a winter storm from the late 1970s.
It's a view of Town Creek I'll hold as long as my memory allows,
one of my favorites, though I've only seen it that way once
and not again since. He helped make that memory for me.

Thirty-some years of memories I have of Pop. And yet
he lived to be ninety. My time with him was a fraction of his life lived.
A part of my life that I haven't even come to yet.

Anna has turned the TV on and asked for a drink.
She has moved on with her morning.
Mine is still with Pop.

Photo by David Stevens, taken at our wedding, June, 1999, Holy Trinity Church in Oxford, Md.