01.21.15  Things have been melting.  There’s a river of ice on our road and everyday I watch the pile of snow on the wrought iron chaise lounge shrink smaller and smaller.  I went down by the water in the afternoon sunshine to take some photos of the January thaw.  A little squall blew in across the lake and I began to have corn snow spit on me, so I ducked inside the tiny cabin at water’s edge to protect my camera.  The cabin was on this property when we bought it, and in the years before we built our home, we would spend the night in there on sleeping cots.  We never slept well; the roar of the waves close-by on the rocks seemed to shake the old place on its foundation.  It was on our first sleep-over there that we realized you could see lights across the lake in the middle of the night.  Don was crest-fallen, disappointed that we were not as deep into wilderness as he hoped.  I was delighted.

I kept the door ajar so I could listen to the waves and feel the cold air on my face, and to be fully present on this January day.  Rather than be impatient to get out and take photos, I told myself to just Be Here Now, still and open to the beauty in this moment.  Sunshine came through the old wavy windows and as I looked to see what it would reveal, there were summer’s life jackets–kid-sized and adult-sized, hanging on the wall where we left them last September.  Such warm memories and eager hopes for a new season.  The snow stopped and I was able to easily make my way out to the end of the dock, stepping in boot prints which had shrunk to half their depth since I last ventured out there.  The clouds had enveloped the sun by then and the blue lake was now steel-gray.  The wind was cold and biting, and I realized it was time to go back in the house and start a fire, make our soup, and settle in for another winter’s night.