Walking up and down the rows of Gina's farm, I saw baby turnips left to winter in
the fields.
I
saw broken carrots turning themselves out through the mud…
…mustard
greens, paused in full flourish, and garlic shoots bending in the bitter
breeze.
In
the woods, under the thick layer of rusty leaves, I found cracked hickory nuts
and empty black walnut shells.
I
found acorns caps and peeling river birch bark.
Walking
down the trail, the greeny underbrush was gone…just gone…and my eyes kept
catching the quartz, glowing through the thick gloom, splitting through the
damp dirt…
…its
snow-colored facets bright as a moonscape.
These are the totems of winter.
Season
of the home, season of the hearth? That’s
what I was running away from.
It
almost done me in…the interior of my urban cabin felt more and more like a
trap.
I
was lucky to escape. A shutter no more, I
was out the house, out the gate, out in the January wilds.
I’d
left the house just after sunrise and drove north through the misty dawn…
…watching
the spruce trees tower over the scattered homes, breaching through the hanging
fog.
I
parked my car next to the fence-row of hawthorns.
These
woods and this trail were very familiar to me but I’d never seen them like this
before.
Where
was I?
