stillness

Last night was so clear, the stars so bright--- I took the long way home from dinner, the back road that takes me up and over a hill between two huge fields-- one that falls off to the west and Mount Monadnock, one that runs east toward Temple Mountain and the Wapack range. The sky is big there over those fields, and on evenings with setting sun, or rising moon, or, like last night, moonless and starfilled skies, oh! It is my favorite way home. There are trees that line the road, but looking through and past there is the wide openness of field and sky, and I always slow to a crawl or pull over, and just revel in it.

There is a waterfalll at the millpond behind the place where we ate, water races over the falls in the spring, slows as the summer progresses, and in winter, it freezes over in some sort of weird freeform statuary that looks like heaps and curls of freshly made and mounded whipped cream.
When it is thick opaque ice, like now, it is hard to imagine the herons that stand and fish at dusk when the weather is warmer, it is hard to remember the hay in those high fields, the big round bales that make my arms ache with the muscle memory of a hundred smaller bales on the hottest days of summer.

This is a time of stillness, like the moment between inhalation and exhalation. The woods are still, and it is cold enough so there is no melt today.

Our footsteps in the back clearing are still deep and run along the deer tracks and coyote we were checking out last weekend.

I am trying to hold my place of improved comfort, or at least not chase it away with fear before I have to. I am trying not to panic at gastro upset, or allow myself to get mired in the middle of the night brainbabble that this-will-not-work.

Last night I got two fortunes, identical to one another: you are tasting the sweet success of your efforts.
Gosh, I hope so.