Snow Day

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
Henry David Thoreau

It snowed today and the school where I work was closed, so I had a day of quiet contemplation by the fire. It is so cozy to watch the snow fall and listen to the fire crackling. Mollie and I took a walk through the neighborhood in the quietly falling snow and greeted our neighbors who were shoveling their driveways. We stopped to watch some robins quarrel in one of our neighbor's trees. I went out to get wood for the stove and then shoveled our driveway. After that I took some photos of the yard because it is so beautiful when it is covered with snow. The creek in the back isn't frozen, but it does have a thick layer of ice on the top, and the gardens are nestled under piles of leaves and now snow. Later I took the compost bucket out to the compost pile. All these small tasks - gathering wood, taking the compost bucket out, shoveling the driveway - are such nice ways to make contact with nature. They force us outside because they are tasks that involve us with life outside the house. I love the connection between our daily life in the house and the life that surrounds us in nature.

Of course all of these encounters with nature occur between and amidst checking our e-mails, getting our electric garage door opener fixed, watching Jane Austin's "Emma" on DVD, and answering our cell phone and our home phone (sometimes at the same time!). Modern family life, even when attended to with conscious awareness, is bound to include all the technological means of communication and functioning that are available to us. After all, we wouldn't be writing this blog if we didn't have some of these things at our fingertips! However, I think making the attempt to connect with nature is important as we connect with the world through our computers. Hearing the water flowing in the creek and the wind blowing snow across the field behind the house is a direct experience that can't be had in cyberspace. This hearing also includes seeing the snow fall softly and silently to the ground; it includes feeling the cold bite of freezing wind on my face; and it includes the fresh feeling of breathing in the winter air. As we chat, blog, skype, twitter, download, upload, and e-mail we can also cultivate activities that take us to the life that meets us outside.

To be admitted to nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded but excludes himself. You only have to push aside the curtain.

Henry David Thoreau