winter wonderland

Tonight's walk with the pup was spectacular. The night air was a crisp 34 degrees, but unlike the past few nights, there was neither wind nor fog. Just the clear night air, so still that the clouds of my exhalation drifted lazily away as I walked.

Rather than tucking myself in and taking a posture against the cold nip of the wind, I walked upright and openly. And rather than scurring along in hopes that moving would warm me up, I was able to contemplate a different route.

I chose to wander around without the usual direction, my aim to find homes with light displays. There aren't all that many in my neighborhood, so it really is a matter of seeking them out. Between the homes with displays, however, are plenty of old Victorians, farm houses and cottages, their windows radiating a warm, amber light or framing Christmas trees covered in twinkling whites and red.

In the still air, I could hear everything with amazing clarity. The sound of a lone dog barking blocks away was answered by the short, periodic squeaking of the pink motorized wings on the back of a harp-playing angel topiary covered in white lights. And the regular jingle-jingle of the pup's dog tags as he trotted along were the perfect backdrop of sound.

The glimpse of stars in the partly cloudy sky took my memory back to the first winter I lived in Oregon. There was a tremendous cold snap with days barely hitting the teens, and it was dry as a bone. I was staying in Molalla, a good 20 miles from the night lights of Portland. One night, when I was home alone and the wind was blowing a bit, the power went out. I bundled up and walked outside to see if I could get a sense of how widespread the power outage was. The sky was like a pool of black ink, but it was absolutely filled with stars. It was one of a handful of nights where I have been nearly thrown off my balance by the clarity of stars. (The most recent such experience -- and the most spectacular of all -- was in Wiamea on the Big Island this summer, thousands of feet in elevation below the massive observatories on the nearby mountaintop.)

In any case, the stars weren't all that clear tonight, but they were peeking out between the clouds. And I took a moment -- quite a few moments, actually -- to appreciate them, knowing they will not be visible tomorrow or the night after. In fact, I savored the entire walk for its chilly but windless and rainless flavor. It was a rare beauty of a night.

I got to thinking about the Christmas lights and why we put them up, whether on the outside of the house or on a tree inside (or, in my case, strung in the upper windows). Religious beliefs aside, we wash ourselves in light to push away the darkness. On the surface, they look frivolous, but they really can lift the spirit. They certainly lifted mine tonight.

At one point, I found myself thinking of something S2 has said to me many times: What is now will not always be, but it is what it is. As I regarded one light display, I stood still and watched my breath. Rather than moving away, as it does in the wind, it stayed with me, a foggy veil in front of my face that eventually dissolved into the darkness. It became a physical representation of the present moment, of what is neither moving away, nor coming nearer. Just. Right. Now.

The present moment is a tricky thing to be in, especially this time of year. My memory is weighted with a host of unpleasant Christmases past. (*Really* unpleasant. The kind where, when the dog suddenly pukes a large ball of vomit beneath the Christmas tree, *that* is the light-hearted part of the evening to recall fondly.) And my status as a single person without much in the way of family compells me to fret a bit about Christmases present and future.

But this evening, I felt the touch of the present moment's perfection, anchored by the lingering mist of my breath in the cold air. Which is when I thought of something S2 wrote on a notecard she gave me along with some sweet gifts (not the least of which were the cashmere gloves keeping my hands warm at the moment). She expressed a hope that the season would touch me in "an unimagined way," bring me some sense of wonder, peace and love. Well, I can't address the last one on the list (see the previous blog post), but tonight certainly had all the peace one needs in life -- and in the air of the night, a bit of wonder as well.