The snow geese have come early this year; or at least, from across our island the swathe of white appears to be snow geese. A friend says it’s the season for them. It takes me a minute to realize that she means, people will be shooting them, and then I feel a little sick. I tell myself that I have to awaken early tomorrow, to see them rise into the morning sky while I can.
Last night I got a blurry snapshot of an owl in the tree over my neighbor’s house. It glared at me before lifting its great body from the spindly branches. Across the meadow, crows swayed in the wind. Through the wispy leaves of the winter trees, I think I spied a hawk. My feeble lens did its best but I cannot really be sure.
After a few hours and a delicious brunch at that friend’s house, I came home and emptied out the silverware drawer. My sister sent a set of silverplate in the pattern of our childhood. My excess jumble of stainless gave way to an orderly arrangement of the new pieces. Their weight pleases me but like everything these days, they trigger nostalgia which in turn, makes me question my path.
At about four, the lights went out. It happens. In this windy place, an extra gust or two rises and takes out the lines. The power company says a crew has been dispatched to assess the situation. I should have heat any minute now. I walk around my tiny dwelling activating the battery-powered tap lights. Every fall, I plan to get an alternate heat source. But December comes and I remember, too late. I watch the pasta boil on my propane burner and dream about the little wood-burning stove that I saw in someone’s van. Just the thing for nights like this, alone on the quiet island where I live, where the cold does not so much overtake the land as sneak across its contours and seep into its crevices.
Christmas draws to a close. When the sun breaks over the eastern edge of the park on Sunday, the long stretch of the year’s last week will loom. If I get the Canon’s battery charged before morning, I will go out onto the levee road and photograph the geese. I will listen for hunters and mourn the frantic interruption of each graceful arc of flight. I will stare across the fields, watching for herons, waiting for the breathtaking sweep of a gleaming jeweled wing across the grey winter sky.
It’s the twenty-fifth day of the ninety-sixth month of My Year Without Complaining. Life continues.
