A note before we get going - this will be my last publication of the year. I’ll be taking the week between Christmas and New Years off and will be back with either a newsletter or Field Notes, depending on what strikes my fancy, on January 5, 2024. May you have rest and peace and a little bit of fun (maybe more than a little bit?) before we next meet.
Poetry
Read Seamus Heaney’s “The Skylight,” a poem about wonder and surprise.
Journeying
I used to live in a glass house in the woods. When my partner was in graduate school, we rented what our landladies had labeled a “weaver’s cottage,” about 20 minutes (if it wasn’t snowing) outside Ithaca, New York, a small college town at the base of one the state’s long, deep and cold Finger Lakes. Our landladies had warned us that the home was really meant to be three season, and they were correct. Two-thirds windows with a cathedral ceiling and containing one ill-placed (in said ceiling) heating vent, the cottage was frigid for six months of the year. Snow drifted and blew against the wall of six foot tall windows that covered its south face and wrapped around its east and west sides. Bare tree limbs brushed against the equally big windows set high in the cathedral arch of the south facing wall. When we arrived home after a day on campus, my partner who generates enough heat to warm a small room, would put on a hat; I would put on a pair of my mother-in-law’s old ski pants, and a hat. As if recognizing its own exposure, the house’s north side hunkered partially buried in the side of the hill. I could stand in the kitchen on this side of the house and look out the window at ground level. During the summer, daylilies grew at sink height; in the winter the snow drifted high up the window so that we washed dishes in an apparent snowbank. Despite its nose numbing temperature, we loved the cottage. It remains the most beautiful place I have lived.
The first winter we lived in the cottage, we learned that our county contained one of the highest concentrations of Christmas tree farms in the country. This meant that trees, especially, cut your own, were very affordable. The cottage was within a couple miles of two tree farms. One, on our paved road, offerred the usual hot chocolate, apple cider, and hay rides to the tree lot. The other was located several miles down a branching dirt road and offered three saws hung over nails on a barn door. Next to the saws was a sign and a slot cut in the door. The sign said, “u-cut trees $10, cash here,” with an arrow pointing to the slot. That Christmas we decided to be minimalists and chose the saws and the hole in the wall over hot chocolate and a netted tree. Heavy snow blanketed the dirt road and everything else as we drove the several miles down it an hour before dusk in early December. We pulled into the tree lot and chose a saw. No one else was cutting trees that afternoon. As I looked out across the empty field, I remembered the height of our cottage’s vaulted ceilling and had a rather obvious epiphany: we really could cut whatever tree we wanted. The price didn’t vary based on the specimen, and no tree would be too tall for our small but expansive space. My usual habit of bending my will to enforced parameters (generally, having to do with lack of money and a wary attitude toward the imagination) gave way to pure possibility. Vibrating with the knowledge of what we could do, I told my partner, “let’s cut the biggest tree we can find.” To which he replied, practically, “O.k. . . What if we can’t get it in the car?” But I couldn’t be disuaded. At that moment, such particulars seemed insignificant. Let loose, my imagination rushed with abandon into the wide field of what could be, where all boundaries seemed dwarfed in size. Just like the trees, as it turned out.
The tree we found was big, definitely larger than its neighbors, but, we thought, not gargantuan. We still had to cut it down though, so we cleared a path through the dozen or so inches of snow to its sizable trunk. Then my partner, cushioned by all that snow, lay on the ground and went to work. I held the tree fast as he went around and around it, creating not a snow angel but a snow wheel at my feet. The orange handsaw took many minutes to cut through the trunk, until finally, we were able to topple the tree. We then began the task of dragging it through the field and up to our car. The tree’s weight should have given us some indication of what we had done. Sure enough, when we arrived at our small two door hatch back, the tree, much like Clara’s tree in The Nutcracker, appeared to have changed size. It was huge. Our field of vision shifted, and the object that seemed only large out in the snow covered tree lot, grew exponentially when placed next to a small car on the side of the road. Imagination receded and practicality returned. How could we possibly get it home?
We opened the hatchback and put down the backseats. We stuffed the bottom quarter of the tree into the car, leaving the rest of the it to hang behind like a bushy tail. We decided that the part of tree left outside to bump on ground as we drove would not be damaged too much due to the shock absorbing snow covered roads and a very slow driving speed. We were right: when we arrived at the cottage, the tree looked just as imposing as ever. Tree branches grow at a specific angle, this proved a disadvantage when extricating it from the car and advantage when stuffing it through the cottage’s front door. Once inside, the tree morphed again. For ten dollars, we had purchased the tree that belonged in the White House lobby. We had to rearrange the furniture. The couch that had faced the windows with their view of the woods, now had its back to the windows and faced the new attraction, the tree, whose girth took up most of our living space. If one of us stood on the far side of the living room, he or she was invisible to the housemate on the near side. Our tree stand seemed inadequate, so for added security, we tied the tree to the open staircase with old telephone cords. We also bought more lights. Ornaments were sparse. And we decorated the top third of the tree from our loft balcony.
I can’t remember what became of the tree after the holiday. I do remember squeezing it back out through the front door and cleaning up a lot of pine needles. We’ve not had a Christmas tree that size since, and the “White House” tree remains one of my most joyful holiday memories. The sense of incredulity and wonder produced by my epiphany, the absurdity of the task, the way the tree completely rearranged our lives during its time with us, all remind me that risk and vulnerability can work in my favor. They can produce emotions and memories and spaces to inhabit that brighten, delight, and hearten me during this holiday season, twenty years later. Our tree continues to give me hope and remind me that just as I can be surprised by the size of trees when dwarfed by fields, I can also continue to be surpised by my own and other’s hearts when we say “yes” to what we thought only a few moments before to be impossible.
Gardening and Making/Mending
Does setting up a Christmas tree count as gardening? I hope so because that and planting an amaryllis bulb are the only interactions I’ve had with the plant world lately. The amarlyllis bulb does not appear to be growing, which worries me. But right now, I remain hopeful. The Christmas tree shortage continues due to various environmental factors rooted in climate shifts. Our tree was one of a few remnants on the lot when my daughter and I went to pick it up (we didn’t cut this one down) last week. I’m always happy to purchase one of the last remaining trees. As someone given to anthropomorphizing and who still, like her childhood self, operates as if nearly everything is sentient (and this may be more the case than we thought given some of the books and articles I’ve read on the subject), I like to think that I’m giving the tree a home for a few weeks, not leaving it to rejection and despair on an empty nursery lot. Thanks to a local recycling program, I also know that it will end it’s life as habitat for fish in a nearby lake.
The sweater is nearly done, and the mitten is wonky. Also, I shortened (as in cut off) a pair of sweat pants for my daughter. Does the latter count as making and mending? The sweater only needs a few more rows of waistband knitting to be complete. Unfortunately, I’m running out of yarn, which means I’ll have to switch to a reserve ball from a later dye lot. Because that last ball comes from another dye batch, the last few rows of the sweater will be a slightly different shade of dark olive green than the rest. I kind of like this. It’s the absurd again, showing up unannounced and making me smile. The mitten is also absurd but not smile inducing. I did not notice that the decrease stitches for the fingers did not match up with those of the thumb, until I’d finished knitting the hand and woven in the ends. I pondered leaving this portion wonky but decided that the weird fit would frustrate me every time I looked at my mitten-wearing hand. So I’m going to unweave the ends, pull out the stitches and reknit. I guess my relationship with the bizzare and fanciful, in knitwear anyway, has limits.
The best Christmas story I’ve read this festive season ❤️