Breaking news

 

Opening the car door, I try to hold onto the shaking camera with my one good arm. 

It has been a long time since I battled bracing winds while walking alongside the Sakonnet River.

I take baby steps on the beach sand, which is as hard as concrete. 

Sea gulls cry overhead, urging me to hurry on.

I swipe away unbidden tears, yet I know that I should not lament the past, but instead give thanks for this gift.

This is my favorite place.

I have come home.

Last August, my mother broke her left wrist when she took a tumble in her driveway.

While visiting her in the hospital, she asked me to plug in a long cell phone cord. I rolled the bed aside, but the cable caught me around the leg and flung me in the air, violently tossing me on the porcelain floor.

I heard the bone in my left arm crack.

Screams echoed around the third floor of the hospital. Doctors, nurses, housekeeping, visitors and anyone in the vicinity fled into the room.

A doctor laid on the floor next to me and warned me not to move. 

I was lifted onto a stretcher and wheeled into an elevator. I cried all the way to the Emergency Room.

When the doctor determined that indeed my left arm was broken, I was given pain medication and a sling and sent home.

A few days later my husband deposited me in my childhood home with my mother. For one week we lamented our aching limbs together.

For the past six months I have cradled my broken arm and twice a week endured Physical Therapy.

This is my last week of P.T.

Back at the beach, I trudge on.

The wind picks up as I walk head down, circumventing rocks or any holes in the sand.

The winter of my discontent will pass.

The summer house awaits.

 

Coping with cabin fever

 

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."

Frozen in time

We wait... 

In the dead of winter, we are frozen in place.

Temperatures dip, and Arctic winds blow.

Snow falls sporadically, clinging to every tree branch and blade of grass.

We hibernate and pray for an early spring.

The woods beckon, a magical forest draped in winter white.

Behind a stone wall, dormant farmland stretches to the sea.

Freed from the barn, horses clad in blankets brave the cold.

The snowy path to the barn is all uphill.

Under the snow by the stone wall, daffodils bide their time.

Weathering the turn of the year

2020 has been one long dark night.

We yearn to congregate again.

We're still stuck but oh so close.

See the forest through the trees?

We're rounding the bend.

God help us trudge on.

 

A sort of fevered imagination

Blessed with an abundance of imagination by the Creator, I have put it to good use this past year.

“What sort of a fevered imagination you must have,” said Mr. Tilney to Catherine Morland in “Northanger Abbey.”

Ditto.

Thank you, Jane Austen, for describing my chief occupation these days.

Imagination is my coping mechanism when I hear the collective cry of the people on this planet.

We are our brother’s keeper; but with each passing day, we grow farther apart in survival mode.

Consequently, I create the world in my mind that I wish it could be.

While I hide behind my mask, I imagine.

Since I was a child, I have spent my summers by the sea.

However, at the end of each season, we closed up the summer house and locked the door until spring.

“Winter is coming,” my parents would say; and I would no longer hear the sigh of the sea rocking me to sleep, except in my imagination.

This fall I acutely dreaded the separation.

Working remotely at home, I had cabin fever; and our seasonal home became a safe house.

“What if we winterize the summer house and spend our weekends there?” I asked my husband and mother.

And I imagined a little Christmas tree, a manger, an angel on the front door. I would read or write with Mom’s crocheted afghan tucked around me, while the snow fell and the wind howled and the sea roared.

Dressed warmly in my wool coat, I would walk along the seashore wearing its winter face, a solitary woman immersed in the elements yet shielded from the unwelcome drone of the news of our day.

We filled the oil tank and hired a contractor who wrapped the pipes; and Saturdays and Sundays became vacation days again.

While the constant threat of the pandemic looms large in our minds, we leave our worries behind when we step inside the summer house.

Surely there can be sanctuary someplace and sometime in this world, despite Covid-19.

At least, I imagine it so. 

Rock solid

We are so busy. Consequently, we do the same things every day, seemingly cut off from the world around us.

As New Englanders, we live in a winter climate that is constantly in flux -- snow, sleet, ice, repeat. But most times, we travel from house to car to workplace, then from workplace to car to house, oblivious to anything but the cold.

On Saturday mornings, I seek to take the blinders off and really see. Sometimes I notice the things I omit.

Take rocks, for example. Here at the summer place they are everywhere. Stones are furniture to people who live by the seashore. I can honestly say that some of the best times in my life have been spent sitting on a stone by the sea with my mom.

Yet if I really focus, I realize that they are the vantage point to view the Creator's art.

Standing stones lead the way to the beach.

Don't fence me in. Millions of stones make up this paddock.

Rocks encircle the beach. Sit a spell or cast a line.

Someone walking the beach stacked stones on a picnic table.

This stone wall marks the boundary of our back yard.

Frozen

January, so far, has been the stuff of childhood, offering a long stretch of sub-freezing days with little precipitation.

Consequently, everything is iced over.

"I wish I had a river I could skate away on / I wish I had a river so long / I would teach my feet to fly / I wish I had a river I could skate away on."

Those words from the winter song "River" bring back a flood of memories:

Throwing our skates over our shoulders, we walk to our special place in the woods, nature's own skating rink.

Shivering, my red-cheeked younger self sits on a boulder, pulls off my boots and slides warm feet into cold skates, laces them tightly and wobbling, I skate away...

Back in the present, Tiverton is frozen.

The Sakonnet River shimmers with slivers of ice. Seagulls walk and nest on Nanaquaket Pond, instead of swim. 

And all these years later, I am still lured to special spaces of the Creator's design.

Quintessentially, New England, Nanaquaket Pond reflects the sun..

Birds on ice. No skates needed -- sea gulls slide.

Coated with ice, the Nonquit Fish Ladder sparkles.

The inlet that leads to the estuary is packed with ice.

Sea grasses cling tightly to the sand bank as winter winds blow.

Ducks congregate in cold waters, avoiding the ice..

Coming home to the summerhouse

The sunny Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend, we flung open the door of the summerhouse, the simple act culminating six months of dreaming and planning for the new season.

Yet, almost every Saturday morning since we had winterized and closed the house last October, my husband and I had returned to the place.

After a quick stop at Black Goose Café to pick up breakfast – usually a cranberry-orange or blueberry muffin or perhaps a slice of artichoke quiche, as well as cups of tea and black coffee – we drove to the beach.

Parked by a picnic table, our Honda CRV was pelted by sand, wind, snow or rain while we surveyed the changing seascapes, one bite at a time.

Then we drove to the summerhouse, and unless snowdrifts barred our passage, we pulled into the backyard and shut off the engine.

My husband braved the elements, walking the property and checking on his landlocked boat, while I sat in the silence and warmth of the vehicle, marveling at the beauty of God’s creations.

It's good to be home again...

Winter by the water

An oyster boat sits in the snow-covered Sakonnet River.

Sea gulls swim amid ice in a sheltered cove.

It seems that one could walk across the channel to Portsmouth.

God's good earth, sea and sky wear its winter face.

Beach sand awaits summer under snow drifts.

The Chipmunk's Tale

It was the first week of the New Year. The Christmas tree was still up, and the manger awaited the arrival of The Three Kings on Epiphany.

Unbeknownst to us, another visitor would be lodging at our house for the next three days.

Similar to the fantastic journey Alice experienced in Wonderland – falling down a well into a strange country – a chipmunk romping on our snow-covered roof fell into our chimney.

Landing in the fireplace, the rodent thought he had died and gone to heaven. There in the middle of the room stood a pine tree sparkling with ethereal light. The bitter cold had vanished, and instead the air was as comfortable as a spring day. Best of all, two bowls brimming with fresh water and Purina dog chow waited nearby.

Yet it wasn’t long before he regretted his fall from grace.

Immediately sensing the intruder, the dog chased the chipmunk down the hallway and into a closet.

Hearing the commotion, I was sure a field mouse was in the house, not an uncommon occurrence when you live in the woods in the country. I also knew from past experience that it would find its way out again or die trying.

However, we closed the bedroom door that night and went to bed with a false sense of security.

The next day after work, I wrapped myself in a soft blanket and began to read. Dozing off for a while, I awoke still in a dream.

Across from me on the side of the television, a chipmunk stared at me while he crunched on a Purina dog chow nugget he had snatched from the dog’s dish.

It was about nine inches long and four inches tall with reddish brown above and a gray strip from its crown to back. Its sides had a whitish stripe edged with black, and its belly was white. Its tail was long and fluffy.

Half asleep, I addressed the rodent.

“I know you like it here,” I said, while it stared at me and daintily nibbled. “These are nice digs, but you can’t stay. Chipmunks hibernate in winter.”

Then the dog awoke, picked up the scent and, barking furiously, chased the chipmunk under the couch. Slipping by the dog, the rodent ran down the stairs and disappeared under the door into the basement.

For the second night, we closed our bedroom door.

The next day I was about to start the vacuum cleaner when the chipmunk ran past me. I screamed, and my husband, who was outside on the deck with the dog, came to my rescue.

With the dog in hot pursuit, the chipmunk circled the dining room table. I ran down the hall, closing my office door, bedroom and bathroom doors. I screamed as they flew past me. But this time the chipmunk was cornered.

Buddy was growling inches from the rodent’s head, and I kept screaming – perhaps irrationally – “Don’t hurt it!” After all, this was one of God's tiny helpless creatures.

My husband put on his gloves and grabbed the chipmunk, which was intent on biting his captor. Running onto the deck, he opened the door and threw his tiny quarry into the snow. The chipmunk was stunned for a few minutes, then ran off, leaving tracks in the snow.

We slept with the bedroom door open.   

Daffodils in the snow

As New Englanders, our roots are deeply planted; but like our towering pines in the wind, we tend to bend. We adapt no matter the weather.

The last weekend in January, my husband and I headed to the summer place. Bright sunshine and balmy air belied the season.

Pulling into the backyard, I noticed that the daffodils, sheltered by the stone wall, had broken through the hard earth and were ready to bloom.

While I walked around the yard, I yearned to open the shed, grab a lawn chair and sit with my face turned toward the sun.

We drove down the street, parked on the beach, cranked down the windows and stared at the Creator’s handiwork. Reflecting the blue sky, the Sakonnet was as calm as a lake in June.

I jumped out of the cab and sunk into the soft sand. With the warm wind at my back, I walked along the water’s edge, longing to kick off my shoes.

After a long absence, I reluctantly returned to the truck.

Fast forward, ten days …

First came the forecast: The meteorologists at New England Cable News told us to expect 17 inches of snow in our neck of the woods.

Eight hours and eight inches later, wet, sticky snow covered everything as far as the eye, in limited visibility, could see.

I had filled the bird feeder before the storm, and the only visitors we received that day were cheerful chickadees that whistled “peter-peter-peter” while darting back and forth from birdseed to bush.

When the snow stopped, my husband ventured out into the dark to plow the driveway. On one of his last passes near the barn, he heard a loud crack. He was sure that a hundred-foot pine tree would topple during the night.

Consequently, we slept in the living room, since our bedroom was in the path of the suspected tree. The next morning my husband found the huge limb that had smacked the roof of the barn before breaking into pieces on the ground. Thank God, the tree was sound.

Today, three days later, the second blizzard hit.

This morning we lost power as soon as the first flakes began to circle in the 40- to 50-mile-an-hour gusts. For the first time this season, the generator hummed.

It is now 10 p.m., and the flakes are still falling. We will dig ourselves out tomorrow, and I think of those daffodils, just yearning to poke a hole in all that snow.

   

Snow day sojourn

An enchanted forest beckons etched by the Creator's artistry.

Out of the wind against a stonewall, a horse surveys its domain.

Framed by sea and sky, a couple walks their dog.

An overturned blue boat awaits summer under a blanket of snow.

The horse is out of the barn covered in a colorful blue blanket.

Glorious red berries sparkle in the sun.

The oyster farmer eyes his boat from the warmth of his truck. 

"Pardon, me. Do you have a carrot?"

Sand and snow create a mythical glacier.