A fitful wind is ghosting through my yard just now, trying to stir things back to life. Swirls of chattering leaves rise in zombie shapes left over from Halloween. But before they can be fully resurrected, they collapse again like spent waves on winter’s shore. Immediately the wind huffs into their crisp corpses – futile CPR! Here and there a maple leaf bleeds crimson. Rain and snow pelt down with a vengeance – gravity seems complicit. Rain, snow, leaves: all fall down.

Bet you never thought of death as a rainbow, but it is a rainbow – a promise. Because how can there be rebirth without death? Has the promise of new life ever failed to come true?

When winter gnashes its teeth, vitality merely gathers its internal/eternal resources and gestates. The smart money hibernates or sinks deep into earth’s wombs or submits to a cryogenic casket of ice. But not if you’re a human. If you’re a human, then you have options – oh, so many options!

Come with me this winter, and I’ll show you what I mean. We’ll start with our thoughts and feelings. No dark grumbling, please, no “bah, humbug!” After all, did you feel dispirited as a child when you peeked through the venetian blinds one winter morn and saw white diamonds carpeting the earth and vanilla frosting on every branch? Did you expand with the crystal inhalation of your first breath outside? Did you feel all-powerful when your shouts on the sledding hill that evening touched the stars and echoed effortlessly back in the clarion air? You knew what to do with winter then.

Ah. That’s the problem. You’ve forgotten how you felt when you were young. Well, simply solved. Soon as that first good snow comes down just slide your derrière into some proper winter gear and sally forth to taste the tang of newness on some winding ski trail or wonder as you wander on snowshoes straight through an enchanted forest. Get exhausted. Then come home to a warm hearth and the exquisite taste of simple food served hot. But leave a bit of your soul outside to dance amid the snowflakes that are parachuting to Earth like benedictions over your magical afternoon. (Psssst!…you just got younger.)

Repeat as needed until spring.

Housebound? No problemo. That’s what windows are for. Stare out in order to stare in as you apply imagination and memory. Or put together a jigsaw puzzle of a snow scene in front of a softly crackling fireplace. Or pay a kid to build a snowman in your yard. Or invert a snowcone in a glass and when it melts, toast Jack Frost and chug it. Or plug in a bramble of Christmas lights and wear it on your head. I’ve done all of those things, and…I’m – bwahaha! – perfectly sane! PERFECTLY SANE, I said.

(Left off the time I poured gasoline on a snowman and lit it – that was research for a novel but maybe a tad insane.)

Here are some visuals to highlight autumn’s transitions. Let the dozen photos below shuffle that rainbow promise I mentioned above as they take on the colors of your imagination: #1-2 a waterfall about half a mile of kayak paddling from my house; #3 wild turkeys looking incredulous as I try to tell them what’s on the menu for Thanksgiving dinner; #4 Three Rivers snow guns locked and loaded; #5-8 first Mirror Morn from my window after the trees went naked; #9 a creek leading off the lake in my backyard; #10 meanwhile, far away off the coast of California, my friend Rick Skarbo and his boating buddy haul up dinner(s); #11 Elm Creek wetlands; #12 the world-famous Peace Garden that another lifelong friend, Pete Adams, built off the coast of Tasmania…. 

That final photo is a fitting finish to this Sullygram. When Pete built his garden he found aboriginal stone tools and a charcoal midden he called the Peace Fire. Nice site for Thanksgiving dinner, I'm thinking. Wishing you all the warmth of that traveling feast and peaceful reflections on the blessings of life and liberty!

  

Thomas "Sully" Sullivan