Midwinter is all about layers: layers of bedcovers, layers of clothing, layers of ice and snow. Everything gets covered, once, twice, three times…
Why is it, then, with all this covering up we still feel so naked and exposed — more than in the swelter of summer when we strip everything off?
The winter world is an x-ray of its summer self. The landscape’s skin of leafy vegetation is peeled back to lay bare the bones of the earth. The sun, with so few shadows to chase, seems so present and powerful even as it reclines in the south. There is no hiding from the cold gaze of winter, no retreat for living things, except to hollows in trees, to burrows in the brush, or in my case, to books by the fire.
For those who do come out of hiding, there are rich rewards. Lots of secrets are revealed in the winter light. Scan the skeletal silhouettes of trees and the well-hidden nests of last summer stand out like knots in the smooth branch lines. The cup nests of sparrows, finches, robins, and catbirds, and, if you are lucky, the beautiful suspended nests of kinglets, vireos, and orioles reveal themselves for inspection now that their secrets have long-since fledged.
If ever a creature was made for total darkness, the opossum is it.
It’s not much to look at. With its black beady eyes, pale pinched face, pointy snout, snaggle-toothed sneer, death-gray coat, and scaly pink tail, the opossum is the after-hours Ratzo Rizzo of swampy woodlands. It is ugly, slow, and, as it turns out, doesn’t have much of a future.
So it was no surprise that our mutt, Jackson, was pretty full of himself after my wife, Kate, pulled him inside after a tussle with an opossum under the bird feeder just outside the kitchen the other night. Never before had such a heinous foe been slain with such little effort… or so Jackson thought as he begged to be let back outside to gloat over the lifeless form in the snow. But I knew better. This had happened before.
We snapped on the outside light and watched through the kitchen window as the fallen opossum performed his Lazarus act. The creature certainly looked dead, though there was no blood thanks to Jackson’s soft-mouthed battle tactics honed on our household cats. After two minutes of complete stillness, there was a barely perceptible heave in the victim’s chest, followed by deeper, more regular breathing. Its head moved, and ever-so-slowly it righted itself and made for the hemlock hedge in a slow cakewalk.
The turning of the year always stirs up a small vortex of hope in me. I don’t make resolutions, but I do try to come up with a few positive expectations to cast like rose petals before me into the New Year: that I will find happiness in the simple things of life; that the people I love will be safe and protected; that the world is inclined toward improvement, not ruin.
I am not naïve. I understand that rosy expectations have little chance of realization unless some action is taken to make them possible. So, with that in mind, I walked the road through the woods near my house looking for Christmas ferns to photograph and for a little happiness in the simple things of life.
As frequently happens, my expectations were met — but in a totally unexpected way. Some of the most elusive treasures turn up when you are looking for something else.
