Waves

Storms like this last weekend remind me of the storms of my childhood, when my brother and I had to stomp through the snow for half a mile to get to the end of our driveway, where the bus would pick us up to go to school.  Some days school would start two hours late, and we could see everything very bright with the sun reflecting up off the glacial snow.  The snow drifted up like sand dunes over the empty fields and it was cold as hell but we respected the landscape and didn't complain very much about it.

Sometimes we would tramp out messages to our mother in the snow of the driveway, so she could read them on her way up the driveway as she came home from work, lots of hearts and I LOVE YOUs.

Sometimes we saw tracks in the snow and we tried to say they were wolf tracks or cougar tracks, something exotic, wild and unseen, not ordinary dogs or barn cats.

One day I found a beautiful pheasant on the driveway, so stunning that I drew my breath sharply.  It was all shades of glimmering color against the bright white snow, brown and tawny and red and teal.  I crouched down next to it and stared for a long time, not even caring that its glassy little eyes were lifeless.  How had it died?  It had no marks on it, no signs of distress, so I chalked it up to natural causes or the frigidity of the air.  Normally death and dead things scare the shit out of me, but not in this case.  Instead, it felt like a blessing of some sort, a gift to be able to see this inherently wild thing so still and close.