"An unusual celebration."
For Stuart. Who would certainly laugh.
“… our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.” —I Chronicles 29:15
APRIL 12—When winter arrived this year it lingered long in the Litchfield Hills of Connecticut. Only now, three full weeks into spring has it passed. For nearly a month daytime temperatures hovered in the low double digits. With windchill factored in it felt much colder.
It was on just such a morning—with the bathroom occupied and my bladder pressingly full—that I reached for my iPhone to consult the weather app. The temperature in Norfolk was seven degrees. I peered through the window onto our secluded backyard where the wind was howling and the ground was blanketed in fifteen inches of white. Hmm…
I pulled on my coat and grabbed my hat and gloves.
There are experiences not to be missed. This for me was one of them. Accompanied by the dramatic play of elemental forces the commonplace was elevated into something approaching the sublime—certainly the sublimely silly. Squatting in the snow, I laughed aloud. The contradictory sensations of burning cold and warm relief were a giddying delight.
In the depth of my personal winter, snowed under with chronic fatigue, I never expected to have the capacity to walk—let alone squat—in deep snow again. It takes a surprising amount of strength and cardiovascular fitness to wade through snow. It requires balance and muscular endurance to squat. All of that figured into my decision and so I turned the opportunity into a celebration.
Our lovely long winter is at last over and exists now only as memory. This morning I awakened to see the forsythia in bloom. The brilliant yellow blossoms will grace this season for a brief two weeks. Will I be here to see them next year? Will I once again walk in the snow?
* * *
I began writing this contemplation in late morning and set it aside. In early evening I learned of the passing of a friend, a member of my Buddhist community, a spiritual brother. Stuart Horn lived a long and meaningful life. He made his days count. The news of his death arrived almost as if a parting blessing, reminding me to do the same.
Requiescat in pace
This comes with two interesting observations. One, the season here is still winter. We got snowed on last week although it was gone in a couple of hours. Two, is an interesting thing that one of the engineers pulled out of his hip pocket in one of the classes I took at McDonnell Douglas. Your image is of a standard sundial gnomon. He wanted it to light up the time, not provide a shade for the time. How do you suppose he did that?