Modest Winter Arc

I’m at my own home for New Years Eve.  That’s a good thing.  We bought this house five years ago but to-date we’ve only ever occupied it in the summer.  The Hudson Valley operates like a proper jungle in the summer time.  The deciduous trees join their coniferous cousins and flush out their greenery to its fullness.  Vines, some of them poisonous some of them benign resume their parasitic efforts, climbing to the canopy, strangling bit by bit their wooded hosts in the process.  And out little locale is protected in all this foliage as if a pair of curtains had been drawn, open only to the remarkable Shawangunk shelf laid out before us to the northwest. 

In the winter that view is still resplendent.  The hill has snow, the sun cuts through passing clouds casting a menu of moods that change as the cold wind moves the clouds about and the sun moves through its modest winter arc.  But all the trees beside the cedars and pines are bare and if I look to the east I can now see my neighbors house.  And he can see me.  If I look down below the cliffs I can now see glimpses of people enjoying the rail trail.  Presumably they now consider my house, as well. 

In the center of the living room is a rather prominent fireplace which is of course entirely irrelevant in the summer months.  There it is.  The chimney does not abut against a wall and if you walk around to the front door and off to the master bedroom you must walk around this central structure.  But in the winter, I’ve come to understand the wisdom of the builder’s vision.  I set up some iconic birch logs with the bark peeling off just so which look like they’ll burst alight at the lightest touch of flame. I have no idea what the wood is I burn in Beijing.  It burns, but it isn’t much to look at beforehand.  The kindling are thin planks of wood that I set beneath the logs and lo, in moments the whole stack is ablaze.  This intensifies when I close the glass door, a feature I don’t recall having in any other fireplace I’ve manned.  Now the fire is roaring and lovely and the room and much of the house is notably warm.

It’s my mum’s birthday and my wife has made a filling dinner.  My daughter has done up a rather dramatically frosted cake.  My mom digs her glass pitcher we brought her from Vermont.  I’m marvelling at how effortless and rejuvenating it is to be with family, when you live ten miles away instead of ten thousand. Nap time now though, or I’ll never make it to the obligatory New Year’s countdown.

We tune in to the folks amassed in Time Square.  We unanimously agree that we’re glad we aren’t there.  I did it once.  That’s quite enough.  The “entertainment” the networks provide is decidedly worth avoiding and we talk over things until the final moment.  Large digital numbers rise up aggressively to the screen: “10, 9, 8 . . . “ Someone says: “what happened to the ball drop?” and we all concur.  “Well spotted!  What happened?  Who made that call to digitize that tradition?”  I suspect it’s been that way for a while and I simply haven’t noticed.  (Apparently it still drops every year.  We just weren’t shown the drama.)  No one is particularly sorry to see 2016 go.  Everyone is apprehensive about what will unfold after January 20^th.