Did you know it is light at 5 pm now?
I must not have been paying attention. I thought I was still living in the dark-by-five season.
But the other day, after Jesse told me mutual was being bumped to 5:00 so there would be light for their service activity (and after I'd raised my eyebrows doubtfully), I did pay attention! And at 5 o'clock it was light!
I should have realized. It's always just about the first of February when I begin to feel the winter darkness is lessening its hold.
And I know, I know, winter and hygge and cozy and all that. One can feel proud embracing those things. And I certainly love stormy days and snowfalls with nowhere anyone needs to be.
Nevertheless, it is a fact that when evening light begins to linger my soul feels lighter! Lifted! (I don't know why this would be, but for some odd reason, the increase in light always pops a memory into my head. An evening in college just after the spring time change. I'd arrived home from an evening Physiology lab filled with excitement that it was still light enough for a run. Hints of spring were everywhere. My brothers had the Jazz game on. [Why do I remember that?] And then I just remember being about a mile and a half from home on the small stretch of hill [after the jutting turn of the road on Polk and 30th] and just ... feeling so happy and content as I ran along. I don't know why that moment from among millions resurfaces in my mind whenever it starts to get lighter again. But it does.)
Anyway, as long as we are talking about the sun setting and rising, did you already know that while the sun does indeed rise in the east and set in the west, it shifts a great deal to the north in the summer and the south in winter? (The moon's rising and setting shifts as well. Though perhaps more throughout the month?) I don't know if it's having a west facing house, or if it's the large stretches of empty fields around us, but it's something I never paid any attention to before but notice so much now! In the winter the sun sets behind the Wellsvilles while in the summer it moves much further to the north so that it stretches across the hay field in front of us before finally disappearing. Sometimes, when I'm up early, I catch the last of the moon over those same Wellsville mountains to the south and other times it is sitting just above the lone tree in front of us to the north.
In the early fall the rising sun pours light from the north east across our patio, but last week, twice, right as I drove back from dropping Summer off at early orchestra in Mendon, the sun crested itself gently over the mountains in front and slightly to the south of me--stretching a washed-out yellow glow across swathes of pasture and causing the frozen grasses to glint and sparkle as if they'd been sprinkled over with fine diamonds. It was so pretty that both times I actually almost cried!
Two more things, tied to all of this in some way in my mind:
1. Last Sunday night I drove over in the cold and the dark with Mike to check on the cows. So many fences down means that the cows are currently a long long way from where their hay is stored under the barn overhang, so Mike decided to start up the tractor and carry hay over with that. As I sat next to him--one hand holding tightly to a handle on the side of the tractor and the other clinging to Mike (to keep myself from falling while we bumped and lumbered slowly across the frozen ground)--it occurred to me that never in my growing up and dating years did it ever once enter my head, never did I even consider, not once did I wonder if I might someday be sitting on a tractor next to my husband hauling hay on a bitter cold and dark night. Why would I have ever even thought of such a thing? I wouldn't. I didn't. And yet there I was. There we were. And ... I was glad.
2. Thursday afternoon, after a frantic mid-baking text of: "Becky! Do you happen to be home? And if so, do you have an egg I can steal?", I ran down the street to Dick and Becky Whittier's. Becky invited me into the kitchen to get an egg. Dick came out to greet me. "Did you see my new calf, Nancy?" he asked.
"You mean the two from a few weeks ago?"
"No! This one is just from today," he said, sounding like a proud new father and beckoning me over to the window.
"I told Becky, after seeing your other two new ones, that they are so small and white they look more like lambs out there than cows," I told him as I cast my gaze out over their side pasture--expecting to see a similar sight.
"Oh, this one isn't white," Becky interjected.
"Whaaat?" I questioned--looking out their window and spotting the tiny new red calf next to its mother. (Dick's cows are a fully white breed.) "Was the bull red then?"
"Nope," Dick and Becky said almost simultaneously.
"It's some sort of a recessive gene," Dick sounded almost awed. "We've never had it happen before."
"How is that possible?" I wondered out loud as we all looked out the window together. "You'd think all that white would be recessive and no bolder color could be hiding underneath it!"
There was a general shrugging over the inexplicableness. I teasingly asked if we were sure the mother cow hadn't been sneaking out of her pasture at night. And then we all watched a moment more--sharing in the wonder for a tiny moment--before I took my egg and bid them farewell.
And what's the tie in all of these things? Well. I'm not sure. The days would be getting longer anywhere of course, but the sun washing over the frozen pastures on the morning drive back from Mendon, shivering on the tractor next to Mike, admiring a new calf with my neighbors. All those moments this past week. ...
There have been times of frustration up here (times when I've cast my eyes heavenward and grumbled that maybe this was all a big mistake): when our house wouldn't sell for months and months and we were completely broke, when Mike's already-long work hours coinciding with the now lengthier commute have seemed far too much, when one maddening blockade after another has set itself in front of us getting the house built, when we've missed being close to parents ... and having more store options ... and seeing our familiar mountains (Ogden's mountains, I must admit, do present a grander view than Cache Valley's quite seem to manage); but in my soul, I have never for a moment regretted or seriously questioned moving up here. Which seems a strange thing to be able to say when the Ogden area has forever been (and will in some ways always be) home. But living up here? It truly feels absolutely just ... right. And I guess it's those tiny moments like I've written about here that continually confirm it for me.
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