When gray days of November trudge into gray days of December, when damp cold finds its way to the skin no matter the outerwear, and when the thermometer’s imagination gets stuck within mere degrees of the freezing point, the gloomies begin to circle. But before they can settle in and suck up my memories of sunshine, I sally forth in search of vibrancy. And, behold, my meandering brings me to a mossy ash!
Or it did a dozen years ago.
A surefire antidote to the gloomies, don’t you think?
Consider this legitimately dispiriting forecast.
That’s today. And tomorrow. And tomorrow’s tomorrow. Ten days to counter the gloomies with wild wandering, a memory vault overflowing with adventures and laughter, plus an acrobatic imagination unconstrained by purpose or probability.
So let’s bundle up and bugout before inertia tangles us in cobwebs. We’ll swing open the icehouse door to the deck, stride confidently past the covered hot tub and the ice garden already hibernating, round the fire pit plucking warmth from bonfires past, weave through the leafless-fruitless orchard to the gate that groans slightly as we open and close it, and then begin our tramp through Rosslyn’s meadows and backland.
What will we discover as we wonder and wander, exhaling swirling paisleys of steam like a bow wave disrupting still, placid places as we venture onward?
Perhaps we will come once again upon this mossy ash, leaning downhill toward Library Brook, gravity be damned, verdant when canopy and stream bank have long since lost their lively luster. Green-green in a forest of gray days.
Perhaps we will discover something else instead…
What do you think?