Cabin_ Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine - Lou Ureneck [44]
It was always a wonder to me how quickly the woods returned me to a sense of beginning again—of a fresh start. It had always been this way with me. Walking an old woods trail and breathing cold air or sitting on a fallen tree trunk to watch an owl surveil the frozen woods for prey—these are talismanic experiences. Nature offers a direct and uncomplicated relationship to the world. It is free of the distorting complications of ambition, shame, disappointment or pride—all of which pollute the joy and beauty that is so freely given by nature.
Here in the woods, there was no spin, and nothing was false or insincere. Is it a coincidence that truth seems in short supply in those places that are bereft of nature? I wanted to tear sham and pretense from my throat—to rip out all the lies—and if that meant pulling out adhering flesh, that would be all right too. What would be left would be clean and honest. I turned back to the cabin, making a circle rather than retracing my steps. By the time I got back, the sun was about to set.
I was struck by the short arc the sun had traveled through the course of the day. I smiled: it had been a short transit for both of us. The sun had risen on the far side of the pond and now it was setting between the near side of the pond and Adams Mountain. If the circle of the horizon roundabout the cabin had been the face of a clock, with north at noon, the sun would have risen in the morning at the four o’clock position and set in the evening at the seven o’clock position—not much of a trip at all. It had been in the sky only eight and a half hours. Back in May, it would have risen around the two o’clock position and set at the eight o’clock position and spent thirteen and a half hours in the sky. The pinched arc did more than shorten the days. The winter tilt of the earth also kept the sun low in the sky. It was this low route and the trajectory of its light that flattened the ground late in the day. The pale sunlight had skimmed over the surface of this little piece of earth and had given the trees long shadows. Now even those long shadows were disappearing in the dusk. A little wind stirred in the cold air, but I stayed seated on the pile of lumber I had cleared of its pillow of snow. I could sit there all night, I thought.
The light was seeping from the woods, and the dark spaces among the trees were utterly silent. This had always been a sacred part of the day for me. The light was dying, and soon it would be night, a bright winter night. The night sky in winter is a marvelous thing. It gives capacity to the mind and dimension for thought and ideas and provides the clarity necessary to see the world as it is, and not as it has been delivered to us by the peddlers of cant and convention, which is nearly always a way of keeping us from our true selves. I sat there, pulled my light coat up to my chin and remembered back to my earlier life, the one in which I was the father of two young children. There had been a night, a powerfully cold night, as I recall, much colder than this one, and for some reason I had been drawn to go outside of the house to look at the stars. The house had been complete for five or six years by then, and my wife and I and our children were well settled into it. The night had been moonless and clear, and there was a profusion of stars. I found the North Star and turned in place to take in the entire sky. It had been a night in which the stars actually sparkled; they glittered, it seemed, for my benefit. The snow was deep and creaked under my boots. The temperature was well below zero and a pale wraith of smoke drifted up from the chimney as the woodstove inside pulsed with heat. I had stood there for a very long time, letting the cold find its way into my woolen shirt, and I thought I would never be happier.
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