Systems of Shooting

"I had no system of shooting as such. It is definitely more in the feeling side of things that these skills develop. I was at the front five and a half years, and you just got a feeling for the right amount of lead. "-- Lt. General Guenther Rall

I'm sure across America there are malls filled with women shopping. I'd rather have a root canal than go shopping, which is probably why I'm the only woman in North America that only owns two pairs of shoes. Although I did buy a new dress for the symphony once, treating the boutique like enemy territory, going in and out as quickly and quietly as possible, I do need to go again. I need a new suitcase. . . well, it's pretty beat up. . . when traveling with it, I look like Mary Poppins fallen on hard times. But I'll see if I can do my shopping online when I get home and head out to the range instead. It's been several months since I'd been. Requal is not going to be pretty, but it's not about impressing someone.

I like to go there early when I have the whole range to myself. When it is just me and the target. There is something about opening the case and taking out my weapons, taking the stance. That first deep breath and the pull of a trigger, my heart pounding as if in anticipation of that first kiss. The background noise of conversation as people arrive after me is inert behind the walls, I can only hear my breathing as the sound of the first shot flares through the air, the way a sonic boom bursts the lie of silence.

Just another morning, with the right amount of lead.  This definitely beats shopping at the mall.

The Long Road Home

 

When I woke this morning, the neighborhood was hushed. I'm not sure what time it was as I didn't see a clock on the wall or wear a wristwatch. I have one, left to me by my mother, given to me, not so that I remember the time, for hers was short, but to forget it. Forget it, as I move out into the world, gathering the wind to propel my journey, not holding my breath to conquer it, the folly of many a philosopher and fool.

The household is quiet, but for my presence, a Lab snoozing in a quiet room somewhere. Outside, the yard is perfect with stillness, the sun glinting between low clouds. No dog tracks, yet, no human or squirrel tracks, only a line of old trees standing with the enduring and ageless patience of static stillness, waiting for something. Perhaps waiting for me to venture out into the rasping cold of a winter morning.

The neighborhood slumbering. I look out, innumerable shadows on the ground as still as if they had been laid down upon it as stencils, sunlight just a pencil tracing, drawing dark and light. Parked out in the back, an obsidian truck, from which I seem to compass forever between two points, moved by blood, duty, and need.

Back behind the trees, the sound of a train dying away to the click of a watch that is not there, running through another day, somewhere far away, for now, fire in his eyes, fire in his hair. The sound hangs in the air like punctuation, the clouds curled up above in small catnaps of infinity, only my small form, and perhaps a camera, to capture them. The train moves away, in unshaken pull and balance, consuming inertia itself, its desire only a breath of steam in the cold air.

The light is soft, a blue cold fragility that speaks of shattered thought, not enough light quite yet for photos, no tangible remembrance of the feeling, only words that gather up their own steam, even as they fade away into silence.

The trees along the driveway reminded me of ones from the woods, where I went out to check on my blind before the last hunt. Those woods looked ancient, evergreen trees bearing their load of snow on sagging shoulders, a few trees holding on to threadbare leaves, gathered around their branches like a shawl. It had been an early snow that year, masking all the normal markings I would have used to find my way back to the house.

As I went deeper into the woods, I broke off a few small branches, small signs that I was on the right path, even as whole trees had fallen over paths I used to take. As I walked, I think of stories of my grandparents on my Dad's side, who were raised here, from whom my Dad inherited the strength of losses keen, of laughter shared, that he, in turn, shared with us. Tales of strong settlers, who did not so much til the earth as rough it up and render it humbled.

People stood on these very spots a hundred years ago and smelled the land, and knew as we do, that no matter how much you love it, it is no sheltered world. Thunderstorms rear up and fight isolated battles of rain and hail, along with wind and erosion, and fate. All curl up over the land, sometimes depositing richness, sometimes stealing our hearts, sometimes stealing our lives. We give and we take and so does the land.

 The woods were chilly from a passing cold front, the air violent and raw, leaves and remnants of blossoms having flung themselves down with one last rush of motion. The fields were littered with fallen branches and the footprints of invisible deer.

At the base of one tree, was the trunk of another, felled during a storm, where I could stop to sit and think. I've spent more than one day or night out on the ground. As kids we'd sleep in the yard on starry nights, dragging out the little pup tent and setting it up under the canopy of the apple tree. We'd lie on our backs in our sleeping bags, tracking satellites through the air and speculating on the nature of the heavens and why the plain Hershey bar was just better than the one with nuts in it. We were kids, and there were no worries, about elections or taxes or bears or the future. We'd wake, ground cold and soggy with dew, and hike back those 10 yards to the house, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep yet energized with the joy of believing that we would live forever.

But we grow up, and our concept of what is lasting changes forever, I think, my shadow small against the mighty form of the tree. There is comfort in my smallness, for I am stricken by the thought of the tremendous history of this tree, mighty roots as old as this land, knitting themselves to the earth, embracing the soil with a firm resolution not to be parted from it without great force.

I'm not the first person to pass here, in the ruins of an old farmhouse, the remains of a chimney, choked by plants that search out implicit ghosts. People were born here, people likely died here, only a chimney remaining, no house to warm.

Then, a few yards away from the farmhouse, the bones of a small animal, a raccoon it looked like. How long had it laid here? Long enough for the bones to bleach to soft white, the flesh now part of the earth, the eyes, silent spheres of history. The shape was benign as if the creature simply stopped quietly and ceased to breathe, unlike other bones one finds in the wild, the animals of the tar pits, trapped in the primordial ooze in the posture of shock. Other animals dropped while running, the bones scattered by predators til the remaining pieces are simply laid out in a question mark.

It only takes a few days for an animal to decompose during the summer months, likely when this creature took its last breath. Only a few days to return to bone, to the simplest components of life, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur. Only bones left, pressing into the soft welcoming earth, the soil a rich bed of late summer.

Sometimes all I find are bones, laid bare to the elements, or burned clean. With the right temperature, all things will burn, yet bone itself stubbornly resists all but the hottest of fires. Even when all the carbon is burned from it, the bone will still retain its shape. An insubstantial ghost of itself, it crumbles easily, the last bastion of the person's being transformed into ash. Yet in that ash remain large pieces, calcined and with the consistency of pumice, yet when held in the hand, almost seeming to possess a trace of warmth from within their core.

The deer blind was still there, still secure, so I begin the journey back, looking carefully to make sure I was on the right path, to light and safety. From a distance, I could see the outline of my truck. From the trees, I heard the gentle huff of a buck, a greeting, a warning, his breath clouding the air in anticipation of that which he knows that he wants.

I wished I'd had the camera, to capture that, to capture all that I can't see, can't remember, so much here beyond the grasp of anything born or invented. Perhaps I could find words for it, if only silently.

The last night I rolled into my driveway late was not from a farm field but from a scene bounded by yellow tape.  Yet even when duty has taken me away from my home, the path home will be clear, the way familiar. Coming up past the house, large spruce trees brush up against the truck as I pull in, back deep behind the house. The back of the property by the garage is quite dark; for a moment, with the darkness and my weariness, I'll hesitate on which way to turn. Then I'll notice the bent branch from my truck as I came in, marking my path. I'll grab my bag, as I hear a familiar greeting, his breath clouding the air.

Our journeys take us to many places, but the best ones are those that lead us home.

Let it Snow

;

Miles Beneath the Wheels

Even after being married for almost 10 years to someone from Chicago, I will never get used to the traffic when I need to go in for a meeting or a pow-wow with our attorneys in the city. I was spoiled when I lived in Indy; on the freeway in 3 minutes, to my office in no more than 10.  Now, my drive is a minimum of 44 minutes (if I leave around 5 a.m.) to an hour and a half (each way) to go about 12 miles if I pick the wrong time and three hours if there is a storm.

It's less stressful now that I've realized that
(1) all cars in the turn lane, up to six, will turn after the light turns red.
(2) stopping for the yellow light 3 cars ahead of you increases your danger of being the victim of road rage
(3) if there is a space in front of you big enough for a car, someone will dart into  it without signaling even if their lane is wide open
(4). if all of the houses have bars on the doors and windows it is NOT decorative and get back on the damn freeway.
(5) eye contact is NOT your friend
and
(6) IDOT creates large deep potholes around the city which are never repaired as they are there simply to test your reflexes.

But we live where my husband can be fairly close to his work and given his duties and hours, that is good. I'm NOT a fan of driving in the dark, never was. but I'm doing it now in the colder months, so I can beat the afternoon rush hour. Beginning the first of my commutes when I moved here when winter hit, was not the best of timings, leaving at an hour and temperature that denied not only sanity but breath. The city itself seemed almost ominous on those initial drives, taunting me with "drive here if you like, but I've already arrived, being here before you were born and standing, long after you are dust. I am the city and you will have  no destination but that which I allow you and it will be nothing but cold and dark until have you have returned again so why even try?"

But over time, as I became familiar with the safest and least busy streets to travel, I've actually learned to enjoy it a bit as with the radio off, and fewer cars on the road, it gave me time to think, to reflect back upon those "might have beens" which are more true than truth,  Outside there's not much you would call beautiful - miles and miles of old neighborhoods and darkened buildings, interspersed with areas of renewal where the facades of homes have been reclaimed.  But you notice the light - not from the sun, as it's an hour or more from tipping its hand, but from the streetlights, as they shine and reflect on window and form.  You see bits of light in other cars, the glow of a cigarette, a dome light that comes on, then off again as someone changes the radio channel then goes back into hiding as quick as a trapdoor spider.

As I drive, words flow through my head, some which will someday splay across a keyboard, others that though gleaming like lit from a candle within, will only burn in the darkness of my own thoughts.  I am careful to sip on some cold water so that I don't actually fall asleep, but I find myself lulled into a cadence where I'm remembering while aware, moving the truck around a known chunk missing in that street, as a hand in a body still dreaming, flicks away from a cold candle, with the heated remembrance of pain..

I see how the light flicks off the glasses-adorned face of someone waiting for the bus in the dark.  The form is tired and stooped, their head down as if with grief, with eyes that have forgotten how to weep, but remember well the tracks those tears left on their skin. I draw my coat around myself, thankful for the blessing of a warm ride, even if it is old.

More often than not, the forms waiting for the bus are female, going into the city to work, often the only one working in that household.  They wait for the bus as if waiting for light, not for the glare of victory but only that which they need to see to endure.

As a child, I never would have pictured myself here, always swearing to live my whole life in the country, where the land was open as the eternal springtime of a young woman's heart.  But with life comes change - some full of wonder, some that are nothing more than the forceps cold tearing free of that which is familiar.  This place, this big cold city, is my home because strangely enough, it is here that I found the quiet healing warmth that is a familiar heart.

Up ahead, comes flashing lights, an early morning commuter train.  I don't know how many times I've watched someone drive around the gates, risking all just to gain three minutes of time making that dash as a distracted night bird does as it dives into the fatal glow of a window. Ahead the empty school bus will stop, waiting with the quiet patience that only something that is surrounded by children can truly understand.  On the drive home, I'll see that familiar yellow form, young girls inside waving their curls and their cell phones, taking selfies as young men hover nearby, sensing that thinning of that barrier we called virginity, waiting for those moments when a girl's heart senses something more than self.

"Don't grow up too fast", I say to the empty bus because it's too easy to lie in bed while someone who doesn't know the word, tells you what love is.

As the school bus turns and moves away, more and more lights dot the road ahead, as restaurants open their doors, and more cars enter the roadway.  The movements and the light trigger more memories, the light being the substance of memory itself, the sight, sense, and self that the brain recalls long after the muscle memories of the moments is stilled.

I think that about now my husband will be leaving, the house, quiet but for the kitchen light, the dog waiting for the dog walker that will stop in throughout the day to take her out, making sure the house is secure. I think of the light of the moon shining down on the fedora I know he'll have on and I'll smile, as I flash my lights to someone on a side street, slowing so they can get into a line of cars that's looking less like a scattering of child's toys than a long metal Caterpillar, turning and twisting past the trees that line the river. The drive home will be this same route, but I'll have the anticipation of home to guide me, the warmth of two arms, the clink of two glasses.

My stomach gently growls as I take another sip of water, not from glass, but from a can. I chose not to eat in the vehicle, not due to any aversion to crumbs but not wanting to do a self Heimlich on the steering wheel if I take a bite of donut at the same time I see another completely misaligned bumper sticker for someone that should be in jail, not office.

During this short stretch, I can almost imagine myself away from the city, away from politics, office and otherwise, from meetings and schedules and fast food, as the sun smolders sulkily there on the horizon, no more anxious to lift itself upward, than I am going to be here. Along the water, are low clouds, distant white masses, almost coiled in the convolutions, not appearing to move, yet someone changing, their journey as much of a slow discovery as mine. But for at least five more years, this will be my trip.

Only a few more miles and I will be there - to don that mantle of adulthood for a few hours, as outside the city awakens. Til then, the lights that flash, allowing one vehicle on the expressway at a time, a color that strikes as if sound, the deliberate hammer blow that you think will be the last, but are simply repeated and resumed, long after the last vehicle is past hearing.

Each and every set of headlights holds a life, one no different than mine but for its past and its future, each of us on a journey, as we stir and murmur on this moving watch that is a morning commute. Some are listening to music, some are simply looking at the world around them with a profound yet distracted listening. Yet each and every one of us makes this trip, takes with us our own burdens and our fears. We make no eye contact, even as we all are touched by one another, that touch that abrogates cuts sharp and straight across color and age, and gender, that touch that enemies, as well as lovers, well know because it exposes something in each of us, raw and longing that we carry with us on the journey.

On my way home tonight, I listened to those silent hammers of light as I waited in the line to fight. But they will not be warnings -  but simply a thump thump along to my heart, as I wait and long to go home tonight.

We each take away something different on this trip, in darkness, and in the sunshine, in tirelessness and in yawning stupor as up above, the sun and the stars hover dispassionately around the imposture of our daily lives.

But I'm still going to watch closely for those IDOT potholes.

The Look of Labs (Courtesy of Miss Lorelei).

 

The Sea That Never Freezes

Last night saw the city and most of the surrounding small towns come to a grinding halt.  Wind chills in the single digits and heavy, drifting and blowing snow resulted in a suspension of most casual traffic, only those that have to make the trek for employment and first responders and LE braving the ice and the drifts. Out in the small towns, there is little movement, but there are those hardy souls that won't let frostbite and politicians tell them what to do.

I had the blinds and all curtains closed against the cold, this new construction rental about as tight from the elements as gauze. Even with the little heater next to the desk, the chill eddy of cold licks in at my skin, as I go to get a warmer sweater and some thicker wool socks.

One needs to be prepared for such things. A few days ago it was in the upper 40's,  another sleight of hand from the greatest of magicians, Mother Nature. Machiavellians stroke on the part of that foe, a new battle towards which it channels ancient wounds, inflicting its grievance upon the land. It will likely arrive to do battle when you least expect it when the prolonged blow of the dark and ice sinks through the skull and lays its claim deep on the bones of the winter landscape. It will not be a day and night safe for man nor beast.

Other than the scrape of a blade in the driveway, a neighbor keeping my drive clear, in case the bat phone goes off. No birds, no clattering of cars starting up. Just the sound of the incessant wind, a  long, broad hum, as if through wires. There was to be a wedding at the local church, I wondered if that had been called off. There is little noise or movement, but the whine of a snow blower, maybe a half block away, the sound sticking to the cold air as if snow on a branch.

It's funny, I'm perfectly fine holing up at home for days with nothing but books, a kitchen, and some tools.  But tell me I can't drive to the store or run to the library, and I suddenly get cabin fever, peering out the window every so often, like a bird from a cage that fidgets with feathered annoyance.

I also noticed something else, something a little nicer.  My knee does not hurt.  After the fall that tore out my meniscus and the resultant surgery and physical therapy, my knee still hurt.  After six months, it was bearable but always there, a twinge,  much worse in cold weather.  Now, two years post-injury, with extra physical conditioning of the muscles that support it and dropping the extra pounds I had put on when I hit 40, I sit here and realize, it doesn't hurt.

It's not the pain that bothered me, I've dealt with pain.  It wasn't not being able to run, to jump to MOVE, quickly and without effort. It was crutches, then a cane.  It was sliding back in time, back to when I wasn't confident in my physical abilities when I was just a skinny, quiet little kid who was picked last for dodge ball, because frankly, I'd rather be inside reading a book that the teacher would think was inappropriate for someone my age.

It wasn't the pain, it wasn't an injury that in the grand scheme of things, wasn't very serious.  I realized at this point that what is dire profundity to the very young, is usually just "been there done that" to those of us in middle age, which is still preferable to the six-foot-deep and eighteen-foot square reality that faces us all eventually.

No,  it wasn't torn and missing cartilaginous tissue and the wobbly feeling I had every time I tried to use that leg.  It was losing a foothold I'd stretched so far and so hard for. It was realizing that we treat our bodies with a sense of entitlement we may eschew in other things as if breath was some plaything given to us just for our own pleasure. I look down on the small scars as if speaking to them. You will let me run, you will let me climb, you will let me explore and make mistakes and play. Now I can't walk up a flight of stairs. When our body fails us, it's like a personal betrayal

It's not just the knee - it's my heart. It still gets enough blood pumping to get me out of bed every morning but it's cantankerous to the point I can't hold a first-class pilot's medical any longer. Sure, I can fly for fun but I know that my days of wearing those bars on my shoulders will never return. Still, it was fun while it lasted. I have my scars but I have no regrets. But it's tough getting old.

It's much as if seeing a beloved old building each and every day, an old church perhaps, the stones so study that time had not displaced it, could not ever displace it, not all of time could have.  Then one day you drive past and it's simply gone, razed and replaced by a shabbily built storefront that won't withstand a good wind.

I sat here in this spot during another storm, after I blew my knee out, the crutches up against the wall, the curtains drawn, as the pain in my body drove for an instant upon me, the thorns of slain flowers.  On that day, I wished to be anywhere but here. The sky was spilling snow, the only light there was laying low to the ground as if held down by the wind itself, unable to rise and move away. It was a day in which I could only sit immobile as the wind howled, dreaming in an Arctic landscape of a sea that never freezes and a landscape that is forever green.

It's easy to throw a pity party, and I was on the verge on that day I realized I was in a motorized scooter in WalMart, one place I swore I would never be.  But in that same moment, as my husband smiled down at me, his having been with me without fail since I got hurt, I realized all that I had. I also realized that putting the small end of the crutch out in front of me like a knight's lance, I could knock the Billy Bass out of the cart of the guy with no teeth.  Oh, sorry, accident, really. SCORE!

I am who I am through hurt and pain and failures and because of them.

Because of that, I know what is important. And that is all the endurance of which mind is capable, of which the flesh has an appetite for. That has kept me going on nights when all I could do was sit and hold a small faded photo, eyes, tightly shut, as if the light was diminished by its own grief, leaving only a lone huddled shadow upon the wall, pale and fading. That has kept me going when fate swiped a paw at me and I swiped back, harder, EPR's steady, left hand tight on the yoke, planting that craft on a piece of hard ground as small as my fear.

I get up from my chair and open the curtains up.  I'll have a higher heat bill, but for now, I want to look out, and up.  I look at the sun I've not seen in two days as the fierce wind hollowed the remaining light out of the sky, the light now holding a quality beyond heat and illumination.  I look up and see a flock of geese setting their own invisible contrails in the sky from a great yet gentle distance, their honk faint upon the wind, like thunder in a Spring sky.  It's a sky that will always be mine in my memory. I may not occupy it now but I will always own it.

In the distance the sound of a church bell, a deliberate note blowing free, like snow from a winter branch. Somewhere within, a priest lifts the Host in a series of shimmering gleams like warm rain that falls from the sky as vows are spoken, and what is broken is healed.

No, I Will Flight

If you spend any time at all outdoors, you are eventually going to come across a wild animal. In that case you have three things you can do, like in any threatening situation. Flee, fight or do absolutely nothing.

Case in Point - there was a hike one time, up in the Rockies with my brother in law, the liberal attorney from California. Suddenly, rushing at us from out of no where, came this HUGE brown bear, and oh boy, was she enraged. We must have been near her cubs and she was out for blood.

I thought about the fleeing part. I could run for it, considering the animals I can outrun - starfish, three toed sloth, hamster. I decided against it.

I thought about getting up into a tree. Let's see, what living things can I out climb? - Manatee, trout, moss. No.

I can do nothing. That keeps the carnage contained, easier for the coroner to pick up.

No, I will fight. That's why I carry a gun.

People always talk about taking large caliber ammo loads while hiking in case of bears.

A 12 gauge Express Magnum loaded with slugs perhaps. The.45 Colt Ruger with 21.5 grs H-110/325 gr Keith or LBT bullet recipes. Maybe a Browning 45-70 1886 carbine with heavy loads, a .44 Magnum or a .45 Colt (in Ruger persuasion for hot loads) both stoked with heavy (240-300 gr) hard-cast lead Keith-style bullets. Another option, the LBT series of bullets, such as the 325gr LBT WFN over 21.5gr of H110 for the .45 Colt bruiser.

But no, I learned I should just stick with my little .22. Over all the years I've been hiking in bear country, I've always had it with me. That and a buddy, you've got to have both. For you should know that the first rule for safe hiking in back country is to use the "buddy system". That means, you never hike in remote areas alone, you bring a friend, even a relative, that way, if something goes awry, you have someone to help you stay safe.

Had I not been in possession my small but always reliable Mark III .22, I'm not sure I would still be here today. Just one well placed shot to my brother-in-law's knee cap and I was able to escape by just walking away at a brisk pace.

It's always going to have a prized spot in my gun safe in front of the heavy iron, I can tell you that.

-Brigid

The Value of Sparrows

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?

 and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.

  But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.

 Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.

Matthew 10:29

Snow covers the ground, delaying its arrival until after Christmas.  The neighborhood is quiet, no one leaving for work quite yet, no tracks in the snow, but for an early morning taxi, one of the neighbors likely headed to O'Hare.

They said it would be just one day of snow, then warning, until the arctic blast came in its wake, bringing temps into the single digits. There's a lot of life like that.  You get through one big adventure, thinking, that will be the best one yet, only to have another, even better down the road.  Or you suffer hardship and loss and think "that's it, Lord, I can't handle any more of this" only to have your words catch in your throat with the tears as life swats at you with its clawed paw yet again. Then there are the moments when danger is all around, and you are pretty sure you are already dead but pretend to be alive for those around you who do not see that you are only a pile of ashes and dust, only to fly past the red line into the rising sun as your co-pilot states "Well Skipper, THAT was hardly "light turbulence" was it?" and you both laugh. I miss the flying, I don't miss the nights in hotels in beds that were never soft enough, or warm enough, yet are always big enough to remind you that you are alone.

Out in the driveway sits a 15-year-old Truck.  A lot of people ask why I don't buy a new one.   I can afford it, yet I don't see the point in making a car payment when I have wheels that get me where I want to go, with just enough rust, that carjackers look on it with derision. But good, gently used trucks are hard to find in Chicago, where the salt takes its toll, on anyone not willing to wait at the car wash every single week and the potholes often have their own potholes.  My truck has less than 100,000 miles on it, mostly garaged since purchasing from a dealer well south of here, and overall I'd have a hard time finding one as reliable.

Plus nothing says "Yield" like a redhead woman driving a giant black extended cab  4 x 4  with multiple firearm stickers on the back window in Chicagoland traffic.

I think the most use it's gotten since I moved here was when  Partner in Grime got in an accident at a notoriously bad corner in our village.  No one was hurt, and no one was cited, it is a blind spot that has claimed more than one fender.  But the local auto repair place was backed up due to an automotive worker's strike affecting the big dealerships so he got to drive the Bat Truck for a while.  

 Best laid plans of mice and men, they say but it beat paying for a rental car.

When bad things happen, how we survive them is really how we look at it  Some people look at every slight, every setback as if looking into a dark forest that is more than gloom but an actual menacing hostility. With the slightest rustle, they are ready to scream, in fear, or for help.  I look into the forest and see, sometimes, danger, sometimes challenges, but ultimately a silent journey that will have me leave it for the next clearing, stronger, with a better-defined purpose of what the plan is for my life.  In such moments, you don't look down at the scars, but simply embrace the joy that comes with both reckoning and recognition of finding your path.

The snow is being replaced by sleet now.  If I'm going to go get some more seed and food out for the critters now would be the time.  No matter the weather, when it's winter and the ground is frozen, they know I will come. They don't see me when I'm inside, they don't know from where I came, they just know I am a presence that will tend to them, even if it's burying a still form out in the garden when time catches up with them. For just as sparrows do not worry they also do fall to the ground.

As I went out, the stillness was the first thing I sensed, then the brilliance of the ice that had struck the ground, only to hold on fast for dear life, lest warming come.  It shone with a brilliance that is newly blown glass as if the slightest shift in the air would shatter it to pieces.  Above it the sudden glint of the sun through the clouds, there for that moment as if enchanted into staying by the mysterious spell that is a snow-swept landscape. Some people don't like the cold brightness of snow, seeing it as cold brutality as opposed to a cleansing brightness.  I love the snow, yet I understand how others view it, knowing too well the peace that a warm night can bring to a day weary soul.

From the nearest tree, a squirrel peers from the branches.  I don't get too close, as rabies in the species is common but there are a couple of the older red squirrels that are so used to me, they will come out of the shadows and greet me when they hear the rustle of the peanut bag. They're not pets, they are wild things, even if I've named a few that live among our 100-year-old Spruces, including Bubba the world's fattest Robin, who I can't see, though he is likely to show up again in the Spring. Such is the nature of wild things and wild dreams, which when viewed, summon our wish for constancy, but when out of sight, seems so elusive and illusionary, they appear less like dreams and more like ghosts that now live in another dimension.

I scatter some peanuts and some sunflower seeds, making sure the feeders and suet corral are full and return to the house.  In my wake, small winged forms hop happily into the bounty even as I shut the door to the house as the wind blows the snow into intricate patterns like some ancient hieroglyph that only God can read.

Then, it was time for one last errand, before I hang up the keys for the rest of the week.  The sirens were the first things I heard beyond the scrape of a snowplow and the honk of a horn as cars positioned for first place on a street slick with sleet.  Up ahead, a cluster of red and blue lights and an ambulance that was waiting too far away from the actual crash to bring thoughts of comfort.  First responders were tending to the uninjured, standing on the sidewalk, while the roof was cut off from what used to be a small car to extract the soul that had been there.

There was no going forward, there was no turning around, at least yet.  I could only sit and watch the scene thinking of time, of forest creatures and blazing suns, pondering actions and dreams, the sound of tears and the wet warmth of laughter, and the bright red agony that is a loss beyond control. I see the faces of those that for at least for a little while I have outlived, and I touch a coat on the seat that still bears the woodsy scent of that last person who wore it.

As I turned and headed back home, the errand being one I could put off for a couple of days, I realized that I am indeed fortunate to have a reliable vehicle, even if old and sometimes shared  For as we learned after Partner's accident - fenders can be fixed. I looked up to the sun, now in hiding, and said a quiet thanks to He who watches over, not just the birds of his field, but his fledgling, forgiven children.

Where's a Porch Pirate When you Need One

Either the Ford SUV is getting a new muffler or Lorelei the Lab has mail-ordered a large poodle.