Country Diary of a Lady: 01/01/2014

It has turned bitterly cold over the past few days.  You breath fills the air with a fine white fog and when you breathe through the scarf that you have hidden your face behind, your eyelashes crust over with particles of fine ice.  The snow squeaked beneath my shoes this morning as I crossed the parking lot towards the dining hall to begin my day.  When I went to sleep last night, the temperature had dropped to -12 and has continued to fall.  The first day of the New Year! 

The sky has been clear today and last night.  Orion shone brightly, in all of his glory.  With his two hunting dogs following faithfully behind him, he hunts the giant Scorpion, who resides in the sky during the months of the summertime.  One of his hunting dogs, the constellation known as Canus Major, houses the brightest star in the winter night sky.  Sirius, the dog star.  It blazed out in a beautiful white orb, which we can see clearly to the right of Orion.

Orion is my favorite constellation and I look forward to the cold, crystalline nights when I can gaze upwards towards the heavens and behold his shape there among the others.  As silly as it sounds, I sort of feel that he is looking out over the earth, looking at everything.  Can you imagine what that would be like?  What would you look at, what would you want to look away from?

The snow has packed down so hard that the campers are sliding along it, as you would on a shiny hardwood floor in your sock feet.

It is strange out very quiet camp is again, after having the last week or so full of people!  But it is just a beautiful a quiet as the noise was a welcome change.  And so we take the breath, once more, before we plunge in once again.

I drove further north this afternoon.  The sky has been blanketed by a rippling, almost dismal appearing bank of clouds.  And while I was glad of the reprieve that I received, the sun on snow can be blinding you know, it cast a sort of quiet across the landscapes that I passed through.  It appears that they have even more snow here than we do an hour and a half south.  The pine trees are blanketed by the heavy white stuff, it’s oppressive weight causing them to hang down their limbs as if saying, “I give up.”

The deciduous trees appeared to have been frosted in silver and white as I passed them.  Almost as though the heavy cold cast a heavy frost that simply enveloped them.  The bogs and marshes that are so prevalent up here are such a different landscape in the winter.  The snow lays its gentle blanket across their rippling growth, and the single pine and spruce trees that spring up throughout their almost alien landscape seem even more singular and lonely struck against the whiteness of the snow.