01.12.15  It is getting close to the mid-point of January and we are deep in Winter.  Another six inches of snow came Saturday afternoon.  i was alone all week-end; but I had company in the woods.  The 20-something son of our summer neighbors was at their cabin and even called to borrow my snow shovel, so I was never lonely in the dark.  I spent an hour or so, in the blue morning light, shoveling the walkway up to the garage.  The stone steps through the woods to the driveway have not been cleared through several storms.  Nobody comes to visit in the winter, so what’s the point, Don always says.  But, a friend had recently asked me how the fire department could get to me when our road is impassable, and I realized that even if a vehicle made it down, I didn’t know how they could get to the house through the deep snow.  Besides, the deer need an easier trek to their trails in the forest.

I managed to get a man with a plow to clear the road, but I didn’t go anywhere.  I finished one long and lovely book, and started another, by a warm fire.  I wrote the draft of a little short story.  I had chats on the phone with a friend as well as my daughter.   I made an artichoke potato soup from a recipe out of my new cookbook, “Monastery Soups”, which has as many poems about soups as it does instructions for how to make them.  And, I worked on a little lesson plan for my Creative Women’s Circle meeting later today, about “balance in our life”.  I struggled with the exercise I intend to present for a long time, trying to get it right.  It wasn’t until this morning that I appreciated the kind of “balance” there can be, deep in Winter, when you’re not trying to figure it out.