NOVEMBER 19, 2022 – Inside the Red Cabin (with white trim—candy cane colors!) and surrounded outside by fresh, powder snow and arctic temperatures, I feel a bit like Santa Claus; more so because all day I’ve been working on our granddaughter’s Christmas present: the most elaborate gnome home I’ve ever designed.
Earth’s latest rotation, however, hasn’t been a day of all work and no play. I took three long excursions by foot and a short one by car—the latter outing to warm up the engine long enough for ignition-insurance after predicted overnight lows of 3F. I used the drive to check out nearby Spring Lake and to scout for birch branches as Beth had requested—by text this morning—for her seasonal decorating plans back home. Serendipitously, I found exactly what she wants—right along Yopps Road (rhymes with “Hops Mode,” this being the state that beer made famous). A live birch had gone down in a storm late last summer. The top branches, of just the right diameter for the decorating project, had landed within a few feet of the side of the dirt road.
If you spend enough time in this neck of the woods, you find that nature does more than gratify the soul. It stimulates the imagination. You start “seeing” myriad images in the lines, light, shapes, colors that fill every scene around you. The old stump becomes a castle; the dead Norway pine branch that turns back on itself, forming a large “donut,” turns into the perfect holder for a set of hiking sticks; when turned a certain way, the big, resin-rich (and therefore preserved) knot of a fallen white pine is a regal bird of prey in profile; the hawthorn stem with a sharp elbow forms the top of a fanciful window frame . . . for a gnome home. Or . . . a fallen, two-inch-diameter birch branch with no sign of rot yet, is a perfect addition to a pot of evergreens that “spruces” up the house for the coming holidays.
Always, my walks up here are forays into a magical kingdom, filled with unlimited possibilities. Moreover, no two hikes down the same path are ever the same.
This morning I stepped outside just as the sun nudged its way above the far shore of the lake. An inch or two of powder had fallen overnight, and driven by a steady wind, the snow was compacted up and down the windward side of every tree near the shoreline. The effect was stunning, and earth’s celestial beauty rendered me giddy. Compelled to save it, share it, I wanted to take a million photos but stopped after three or four. How on earth, I asked myself, does one photograph heaven? Once I’d acknowledged the absurdity of my very human impulse, I put my iPhone away. (By that time, I also realized that because of extended exposure outside my mitten, my fingers no longer transmitted sufficient warmth to activate the shutter button on my iPhone photo app.)
When you find yourself in heaven, the best place to save the views is in your eternal memory.
(Remember to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.)
© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
