The view from here

It is still January, the month that goes on and on. I thought I'd catch up with some pictures from the past few weeks. The view from here is full winter. I keep coming upon flocks of cedar waxwings chirruping their high pitched "bzeee" from the top of a cottonwood or between the berries of a mountain ash. I know they winter over in Montana, but somehow they make me hopeful for spring. Is it too soon? I think I can answer my own question: it surely too soon to even let that word flutter around my mind. And yet the sight of the waxwings does seem to warm me.

Goldeneyes, on the other hand, make me frigid. On Sunday afternoon, we all walked along the Clark Fork River in the middle of town. Great floats of ice drifted west with the current and a strong wind blew out of Hellgate canyon, sweeping down the riverfront. As I looked at the river, I noticed dabbling peaceably mid-river were a brace of goldeneyes. Unlike mallards, these ducks dive entirely under the water, making small fishlike flops as they arc under the current. Bundled in my boots, coat, hat, gloves and scarf, I felt a little awed by the goldeneyes and their adaptation to such a living. I should think there were easier ways to go about the business of survival - flying south for instance - but evidently it must work for them, and the competition for this coldwater niche didn't seem so tight. Let's hear it for feathers and a nice layer of fat.

We have only had a slight dusting of snow since our last big drop a few weeks ago. I'm hopeful for another round so we can again hit the local ski trails. Until that happens, we will continue to content ourselves with walks. Than and I took advantage of some sunshine the other day to walk the boys up Waterworks Hill. Though it was sunny on the northside of the hill, the Missoula valley was still socked in with an Inversion (capitalized because it is certainly a presence, if not a proper proper noun). If you don't know what that is, count yourself fortunate. Let's just say when an inversion is caught in the valley we can be socked in for days. When this happens I find myself thinking, "I seem to remember there was a mountain around here somewhere. Now where did it go?" When the inversion thinned enough above our neighborhood for us to remember where the mountains stand, Than and I ran the boys up top. Actually, Corin ran himself and remarkably speedily too. Seth had to be carried as he accidently left the house in one of his shoes and one of Corin's (if you would like to know how that happened, you may direct your inquiries to his Uncle Than) . The following pictures are from our delightful walk.

Looking into the Inversion

The view the other way


A Frosted Mount Jumbo

100 Years Young

Our dear friend, Ruth, turned 100 today. Twenty or so people gathered at her home to celebrate this momentous birthday. The Missoulian even pitched in by running a feature on our special Centenarian. For the past two and half years, I have been making meals for Ruth two nights a week. What I thought was going to be a part time job, has turned into an incredible gift: a friendship with Ruth that is immeasurably important for me, and the chance to be part of an amazing group of people - the community of folk that love and care for Ruth.

Ruth and Patricia

Ruth sees opportunities for joy everywhere. Everyday things - the colors in her garden in the summer, the taste of a fresh strawberry, the light flooding in from her front window, a glass of warm milk at bedtime, the voice of a friend reading the paper aloud, the neighbor's cat who pops in for a visit, the blooms of the forsythia her mother planted - are all cause enough for simple and profound joy. There are fresh beauties all around, if you care to look. Ruth, who rarely leaves her home and lives almost completely in three rooms, has taught me to see the expansiveness of what is before me, even when, or perhaps especially when, it can seem so small, so limited. I cherish my dear friend: all the cups of tea we've shared, all the books we've read together, all the times we've just sat watching sparrows pick seed from the feeder, each moment unfolding simply, beautifully before us.

Friends enjoying one another

Skiing!

Than and Kara and I took the boys for a ski yesterday - well, we skied and the boys rode along, Seth snoozing and Corin enjoying the sleigh ride. "The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifting snow. Oh, over the river and through the woods... " In this case I was the horse attached to the buggy. But what a beautiful afternoon it was. It snowed while we were skiing and the trees kept sloughing great heaps from their boughs. Even though I was huffing it up hill and down, it felt great to be out amongst the trees, alongside the creek, in the twisting snow.

Doubling as a Pack Horse

Kara on skis

Than and Kara: Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Afternoon

Happy Birthday Seth

On Saturday, we wound down our holiday season by celebrating Seth's third birthday. Seth's birthday arrives right when I am ready to be done with festivities, so the poor guy gets a bit of a short shrift. However, we did manage to make some birthday cupcakes, light some candles and throw together a bit of a party. It all turned out and he was pleased to finally be three, an age to which he has been aspiring since Corin had his birthday in September.

After two weeks of vacation, festivities, Christmas, New Years, birthday, sledding, and snow, I awoke this morning with one thought in my mind: routine! Monday morning, I salute you. Peanut butter and jelly packed in a dinosaur lunch sack, I salute you. Hats and coats and mittens and snowpants, I salute you. School drop-off, I salute you. I am always glad to see the holidays come and always glad to watch them go. I love feeling my days and weeks restored to their normal course, like a river regaining its banks. And so, not without gratitude for the past few weeks of holiday-time, I was pleased to take my children each to their respective schools this morning, and come home for a few hours of work. For everything, there is a season.

On another note, I received a bird book for Christmas that is filled with recorded bird calls. Seth loves the call of the Willow Ptarmigan and won't let us turn the page or play any other call. Over dinner this evening, we found ourselves trying to imitate the call with varying degrees of success. Tim was the unqualified winner, though Seth also does a creditable job. I highly recommend that you listen to the sound of the willow ptarmigan at this link: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/audio/Willow_Ptarmigan.html

If you listen to the link, you'll have some idea of what our dinner table sounded like this evening. You are welcome to join us for dinner any evening, price of admission: one Willow Ptarmigan imitation.

Happy New Year to each of you.

Merry Christmas. Happy Boxing Day

Snow Angel

When my family spent a year in Kenya we became acquainted with the British (and post-British colonial) holiday known as Boxing Day. Boxing Day, December 26, (also known as St. Stephen's Day) was originally a day for charity. One can almost see a high-minded British lord giving his servants a special hamper of meats and sweets on Boxing Day. But despite the wonderful tradition, I have now seen another side of Boxing Day also fitting of the moniker. In this era of internet shopping and shipping at the holidays, my Boxing Day was full of breaking down the mountain of cardboard in my kitchen and making repeated trips to the car to pile the recycling. I am happy to report that my kitchen is mostly cardboard free. And now I have only to figure out what St. Stephen would have had to say about it.

We had a wonderful white Christmas complete with snow falling through out the day. The boys were appropriately giddy in the morning and spent most of the rest of the day (post gift opening) laying about amid the assorted fragments of ribbons and packaging and wrapping paper, playing with a few new toys. In the late afternoon our neighbor, Leslie, came over and we all went sledding, flying down the hill farther with each trip as we wore a track through the knee high cover. In the evening, Tim and I took the boys to our friend Ruth's who was celebrating her hundredth Christmas. Together the five of us had dinner, eating from Ruth's beautiful Christmas china, and enjoying the 97 year age span. It was a great end to Christmas day, celebratory and warmly full. I hope you each had a holiday that was warm and bright and truly merry.

Snow Walk on Monday

Happy Boys


Opening Presents


Ruth with her Christmas china

Earth stood hard as iron

While the rest of the northern half of the country has been being socked with massive snowfall, we have been cold cold cold but relatively snow-less. The boys have been making due with the drifts that cover the ground, but their snow angels are poor specimens with bits of grass peeking through.

Tonight however, upon leaving church after the advent program, Lessons and Carols, we walked outside to find we were being snowed upon with large lacy flakes, the kind which meander down, twirling. It was a wonderful sight; the car was blanketed in the hour we'd been away from it, the trees reaching with full arms. Tomorrow I will take the boys sledding, we will have cold noses, we will pack snowballs and make hearty, grassless angels.

Lessons and Carols is one of my favorite services of the church year. Year to year it is the same: nine readings interspersed with carols. We sing some of the most beautiful hymns in the book, the ancient "Of the Father's Love Begotten" written by Marcus Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (348-410), the modern "A Stable Lamp is Lighted" written by Richard Wilbur (b. 1921), a former US poet laureate, a 15th C. German carol, "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" and the 19th C. "In the Bleak MidWinter" written by poet, Christina Rossetti.

There is something about each of these, a line or phrase, that keeps me coming back to them. In the Rossetti poem it is the whole of the first stanza "In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter, long ago." In the German carol it is the repetition of the words, "when half spent was the night." In "Of the Father's Love Begotten," I love the words "he the source, the ending he." And in the Wilbur poem it is the beginning of the final stanza: "But now, as at the ending, the low is lifted high." There is such richness to these words, I could walk the hard freeze of my winter landscape all day and never wear through Rossetti's image: "frosty wind may moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone."

We have been busy this week with holiday things: Botanie's christmas party (our first year with enough employees to warrant a party!), our friends' annual white elephant exchange (we got a pocket screwdriver set, but missed the yodeling pickle) and several trips to the post office to mail off packages. The boys slept by the tree with Tim on Friday evening, a special holiday tradition that I remember seemed so magical, so wonder-full when I was a child, cozy in my sleeping bag by our glowing tree. This year, it was fun to come down to make my tea in the morning and find all three of my boys still fast asleep around our beautiful fir.

And in case you were hoping, as I was, that the Montana Grizzlies would come up with a National Championship, it was not to be. They lost (badly) to the U. of Richmond Spiders, who wrapped them up 24-7. The restaurant where we watched the game was not so jovial as last week when the Griz took the semi-finals. This time the cheering was replaced, for the most part, by groaning and other noises of exasperation. And Corin was duly pleased with the change in the decibel level.

Only a few days until Christmas, the snow continues to twirl and drift outside, and I wish you each a season that is full and bright. I'll leave off with the first stanza of the Wilbur poem:

A stable lamp is lighted Whose glow shall wake the sky;
The stars shall bend their voices, and every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry, and straw like gold shall shine;
A barn shall harbor heaven. A stall become a shrine.

Winter Finally Arrives

Until Friday evening, our Missoula winter had yet to arrive. Last week when we cut our Christmas tree, the day was 50 degrees and we were shedding coats, the children pulling their sled through mud. On Friday night, however, the weather finally caught up with us and the thermometer has since been hovering around zero with a wind chill far into the negative twenties. We woke on Saturday morning to our first snow of the season and shoveled our walks only to have them covered again by blowing drifts.

I guess the season of wet boots, soggy mittens, piled snow pants, and snowy hats littered around the door has officially begun. Though we bundled the kids and ourselves and tromped around the yard, making several snow angels and eating a few handfuls of powder, we didn't last out-of-doors for long. The wind was too blustery and the cold far too biting for any prolonged enjoyment of our first snow of the year. Instead we turned to the old indoor standby of the holiday season: cookie baking.

Our friend Mayumi was with us for a day before heading back to Japan for the winter break. She and the boys decorated Christmas trees, stars, bells, and candy cane cutouts.

The boys ate more frosting than they decorated with:

Our weather for the coming week looks like a prescription for more hunkering down:

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
-1° F | -15° F -18° C | -26° C	2° F | -13° F -17° C | -25° C	9° F | 0° F -13° C | -18° C	11° F | 0° F -12° C | -18° C	11° F | -6° F -12° C | -21° C

With a high of -1 tomorrow, I think the boys and I will be doing all our Christmas baking in the next few days. And, hopefully, finding less sugary ways to beat cabin fever.

On another note altogether... some of you may know that I have a sort-of-secret love of football and am thus pleased to say that the Montana Grizzlies are headed to the National Championship (Division 1-AA) after a big win over JMU (for you few VA folk that might be reading this). Tim and the boys and I joined my cousins and our friend Elsa at a local restaurant to watch the game and found ourselves along with the entire population of diners and drinkers yelling and giving high-fives to everyone around. The only person not enjoying the win was Corin who thought the whole thing was "too loud" and in general doesn't like it when adults are acting atypical - which for us watching televised sports, much less yelling loudly in public places, certainly qualifies.

And on a final note, Seth has been donning his Santa hat and walking around crouched and growling, like a T-Rex. We couldn't figure out what he was doing until he started repeating: "Santa Claus" (growl) "Santa Claus" (growl). It was then we realized he had confused "Claus" and "claws" and was acting in accordance with how he thinks Santa Claws would act. Sort of makes for an interesting twist on the old guy, don't you think? Sounds like a scary movie trailer: Better watch out, better not cry, better not shout I'm telling you why. Santa Claws is coming to town.....rrrrr.....