Looking out the window, I gaze at a world of white. Snow clings to every branch and leaf in the back yard. I lean against the glass and shiver from the cold seeping in.
A cardinal pecks at the birdfeeder, a bright red spot in the snow. His mate joins him; the orange beak her only adornment against muted brown feathers.
"Living in the country in winter is not easy," said nature writer Gladys Taber from the perch of her seventeenth-century farmhouse in Connecticut. "It is not simply sitting by a log fire and reading that good book. It is no life for lazy people. One morning always comes when you are snowed in, no matter whether you planned to go out or not. You can't even open the front door."
Past winters have been warmer, which was attributed to global warming; but this year has been cold, windy, snowy and stormy. As lovely as fresh fallen snow can be, confinement sets in as day after day dawns dark and dismal.
"Most of us, I thought, are caged in some way all our lives," said Taber. "There are walls and bars and fences of all kinds, invisible but tangible. We spend a great deal of time climbing over obstacles --perhaps this is what life is all about. But we must all, I think, long for a brief time of real freedom outside the restrictions of our existence."
Hidden beneath hundred-foot pines, our barn is camouflaged in the snow. The Amish hex sign at the peak draws the eye to the heavens. The well-worn path is obscured. Cabin fever sets in.
"The ancient house speaks to us," Taber said. "Footfalls sound on the steep stairs, doors open softly, floorboards creak, echoing lives lived here long, long ago. And I think echoes of the lives of our family will be here too."
