Your body has taken note of the fact that the daylight is on the upswing. The sun now appears over the distant mountains at 8:30 a.m. and goes down behind them at 4:45 p.m. So now you have enough time to look around and see the landscape for what it is, pinkish orange morning and night. This is called alpenglow.
Around the time of the solstice there is no alpenglow.

With the onset of more light, you become more energized. This is in part because the Sun supplies Vitamin D. You also then move around, and in moving around more, you get your blood moving again.

Bill sorting

You also know that although it’s a few months away, that it will again be spring, a time of year when the migratory birds appear.

The other night you were talking with a friend about the fact that migratory birds are a good example for those of us who continue to spend the winters in Alaska. They know to go where it’s warmer and brighter. Yes, we know that it’s warmer and brighter down south, but we instead remain rooted. We should too, head south.

The prospect sure appeals to you – you think often of being able to trail ride every day in the winter. You could come home, with the birds, in the spring. They don’t get lost, so neither would you.

You have, thus far, managed to keep yourself busy this winter, and in keeping busy, you have kept from doing the complete spiral down. Still, you saw the bottom of the murky depths – it was dark, cold, uninviting. This is not why you spiraled back upwards. It was because you looked up and saw the light above you. Far better, you then thought, to head up instead of back down.

Today was a day when it occurred to you that you made a good choice. This is not to say that tomorrow it might occur to you that you made a bad choice. You just never know. Life is a gamble.

You began your day tending to horses, chickens, and goats, then went to the Meeting House. You got there late because there was a fender bender at the corner of Palmer Fishhook Road and the Glenn Highway. Bill, who you were to meet was already there. He’d already gotten his kids’ books for distribution.

Together, you both took a look at the downstairs area and talked about future plans as far as storage goes. You then went back upstairs, and he put together banker boxes for you. You filled the boxes and moved them downstairs, in the now expanded storage area.

Then, because it is Bill’s birthday on Friday, you treated him to lunch at Vagabond Blues. You had vegetable soup curry – it was awful, just awful, had lots of salt and no taste. But the company was good. You and Bill are good friends, so there wasn’t much to say. By this I mean that it had already been said.

You came home and quickly wrote three of seven prose poems, in honor of Charles Simic, the last mentor of yours to pass on.

Next: 19. 1/19/23: Creating a Need