Work on a deck has gone long, deeper into the colder months
than...
Work on a deck has gone long, deeper into the colder months
than we’d hoped. We have been outside these last weeks, with handwarmers tucked
into our work gloves, wearing double the usual amount of pants.
Working outside tends to focus attention towards simpler
things: temperature, wind, the sun’s low path as it shifts above, then quick
behind, the peaked roofs of this one-way street in Somerville. Winter light is
better light, purer and more interesting. It brings a clarity and a glow that’s
lost April through October. I like being outside in it.
We shed layers as we warm and pull them back on as the sun rides
west and low and we’re left in late-afternoon shadow. A moment comes each
afternoon, pulling on a hood or re-buttoning a vest up the neck, when one or
the other of us says, “Colder.” Everyday it happens, and it is real, this
registering of change, this daily cooling, and it seems something somehow to
treasure: it does not get boring.
