The new year is here and already the middle of January is only a few days away – next Wednesday actually.
We’ve had some bone chilling cold, a little snow and wind to greet it, along with the local TV weatherman’s promise of some (very) slightly warmer days on the way.
So far, when you step outside, it doesn’t feel like it will ever be warm again. Most mornings lately, it has been frosty and that’s a bit of an understatement.
I’ll bet there’s been ice building up along the edges of the Tobacco by now, and heavy frost on all of the trees, especially on the riverbanks. It’s probably a Christmas card out there…
That’s one of the things I miss the most about our years of living “on the Tobacco,” those scenic times in the mid-winter when I could be inside by the fire and enjoy all the beauty – and the wildlife – outside.
Here, on the edge of our new “wildlife refuge” across the road, we don’t see as much of the deer, rabbits, squirrels, or other “earthbound” varieties, at least not yet, but we do have a wonderful assortment of birds who regularly empty our feeders on the south side of the trailer. When it comes to birdwatching, I am strictly an amateur, and I don’t have the slightest idea what some of our feathered visitors are, but they all empty the feeders regularly and if Jack doesn’t fill them fast enough, you might see them scrounging around in the leaves and snow on the ground, probably for something more to eat.
Lately the birds fly up to the window when the feeders are nearly empty, as if to say, “You’re slacking off again!”
Jack is hard-pressed to keep the feeders full with all of the frantic activity out there, from the goldfinches in their brown winter apparel to the red-winged blackbirds, our most constant visitors.
January is still a special time of year.
I’m not often up before the sunrise these days, but when I am, the brightening sky looks like you can almost see the frost in the air. I still like those cold winter mornings when the sky is full of pinks and blues as the sun comes up. We have had a few of those mornings already this year.
Before we remodeled the old place on the river, winter mornings in the house, back then an older mobile home, were especially beautiful. We had those old jalousie single pane windows you always used to find in house trailers and they would be covered in frost pictures lit by the early morning sunlight.
They reminded me of years ago, waiting for the school bus to come around the curve in the morning. Sometimes it would be so cold that I would watch through the frost on the windows at a white still world. It looked like the pictures in my favorite storybooks, pinks and blues in the sky streaking the snow with rainbow colors in the early morning light.
Even though those days are gone, I still enjoy watching the sun come up over a frosty scene in the morning.
For me, winter doesn’t have many redeeming qualities, but I think January sunrises are perhaps the most beautiful of the whole year. In January, the sun comes up late, but once it starts, full daylight arrives in a very short time. For a few minutes you can see that magical quality to the light, full of colors, and when we still lived next to the Tobacco, sometimes with steam rising from the river to dress the trees and bushes along the bank with an extra lacy collection of frost.
It was a great time to relax with a cup of coffee, or a good time to take a walk – if you were brave enough.
Those January memories make me “almost” like winter. But truthfully, these days I am more interested in keeping my feet warm… and dreaming about a trip to the sunny south.
