Of Wonder and Risk and Living a New Year

New Year's Day, and after yesterday's four or five inches, more snow is predicted in the hours ahead. I have a mixed reaction. I love tromping around in the Vermont snow; love watching it fall and love watching broad evergreen branches intercept its decent. But our tickets demand that we make the trip back to Boston today for the flight home, and I'm less enthused about driving on frozen roads. The juxtaposition, then, of beauty and playful awe, with tedious and precarious hazard.

Something, it occurs to me, like the year ahead -- a wonderful, perilous mix, no doubt, of opportunity and beauty and disappointment and sore muscles. Exactly like every year. Looking out over the virgin hours and weeks and months ahead; catching my breath at the beautiful expanse of the time unsullied, for this single moment, by footprints and plowed roads, I realize I haven't made a lot of resolutions. There is, of course, the one: to practice a little remedial medical prudence by finally getting around to those diagnostics urged upon 50-year-olds, a year or so now overdue. I'm not getting any younger, after all, and I would like to get considerably older. I'll call for an appointment first thing tomorrow. Then, of course, there are those other resolutions more assumed than stated: to lose a little weight, exercise a little more, and better love my neighbor as I better love myself. And Lori and I have named some collective practices we intend to claim for the months ahead. So it's not like I -- we -- have no direction.

It's just that living 2008 will likely look a lot like living January 1: doing my best to live as both the little boy, full of laughter and wonder, playfully laughing with arms wide and tongue outstretched to snare the falling flakes, and the church custodian shoveling and sanding and salting to mitigate the risk.

Good luck,
enjoy the snow,
drive slow when you need to...

...and Happy New Year.

A First Day in Paradise

The roads were clear today, and blue sky elbowed its way in-between the clouds -- quite a change from the snowy arrival late yesterday afternoon. What should have been a two and half drive from Boston's Logan Airport demanded more like four. Traffic was as heavy as the falling snow. Every time I became aware of my white knuckles on the wheel I reminded myself that "snow is why we are here." Admittedly that recollection was easier once we arrived at the Vermont inn where we will welcome our third straight New Year.

Driving today was a different story. We started south toward Grafton to discover the cheese factory there. We headed back north to Woodstock to stroll the quaint streets and add more flannel to our wardrobe. But most importantly we pulled off the road and hiked a bit up a mountain road where branches still labored under their snowy loads, and the mountain stream rolled between their banks, the sound uninterrupted by traffic or talking or...anything. "This," I had no trouble reminding myself, "is why we are here."

Now twice-supped, one day explored, and content beside the fire in our room, we are enjoying the pictures from the day.

And the peace.

And the quiet.

And the snowy lanes and streams.

And though we have not yet seen a moose, we have had the chance to kiss inside a covered bridge.

Ah! December in Vermont.

The moose can wait until tomorrow.