It's Me, Again

I know.
I'm actually back here two days in a row. Can you even?
This is what happens when I structure my time.
I start catching up.
Feels good.

It's cold here today, with wind gusts swirling down off the mountains and wreaking havoc in the field full of dead goldenrod and all the other wildflower seed heads I've left there for the birds and whoever else stops by for something to eat. We're also supposed to be getting snow squalls, only according to weather.com they may rage in and create very little visibility, then sweep out again. And now they are. Oh, boy.

There are things I love about winter, but what I translate as the cruelty of it isn't one of them. (And yes, I know it's not a deliberate cruelty, just a necessary seasonal change, but that change affects everything.) I live in a place where the wildlife is fairly abundant (seems like there was a lot more of it when I first moved here, though) and winter makes survival so much harder for so many of them.

Food becomes scarcer, bellies are harder to fill and the search is all-day affair, sometimes just to break even. The thought of this kills me, for both man and beast. Shelter on these mountains may seem like a given but where I am there aren't all that many wind-blocking pine trees and so the majority of the trees drop their leaves and are stripped bare, leaving little place to huddle. True, there are caves, dens and ledges, brush piles and abandoned buildings, and so I have to hope it's enough. My property is open to any animal who chooses to shelter here, and I try to make things easy for them.

For instance -- and this is a small example but when you're a prey animal and never really safe, I'm thinking a little nest out of the wind and weather might help -- so when I went out to close down my garden this year, I turned over one of the big potato pots I'd grown potatoes in and discovered a large grass...well, kind of like a hut underneath it. Or a grass tent. Something that whispered, "Someone small and vulnerable, maybe a field mouse or a little vole family lives under here." At first I was going to just stack the empty pot with all the others and then I stopped and thought, "Wait. I can do better than that."

Because the temperature is dropping and the ice is coming, and the snow, and while I'm warm and tucked away inside, so many others aren't. 

So I put the pot back over the little grass hut, and then I went and put a mess of others back out, too. So what? Why not? Instead of one tidy but useless pile, now I have a multitude of upside-down pots resting on the long grass in my fenced-in garden.  Like a fun, scattered little neighborhood where anyone who needs shelter, temporary or otherwise, can slip in and take it. 

Like I said, a small thing to me, but maybe not to someone who needs a place to bed down and tuck those cold little feet up beneath them and doze, just for a while. 

And you know what? Writing this, I just realized that it doesn't feel like a small thing to me at all. It feels necessary, like a heart-gift I give myself, creating safe places outside and hoping someone uses them. And I may never know if they actually do or not, but that isn't the point. The point is that in an inhospitable climate, when everyone struggles harder just to make it through, that there is yet another safe place -- a rest stop maybe, for the cold and weary -- to catch  a moment of peace.
 
So, that's my take on winter. And once again, next spring, I'll plant a few more pine trees.

And happily, in book news, this amazing review of ME SINCE YOU (coming Feb 18, 2014) knocked my socks off so read on, enjoy, and stay warm!

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/521645354