Letter: On this day – Solstice Passing

By Bob Warfield.

Everything vertically exposed to sky or beneath the drip of a single drop is water-iced. It is hazardous under foot or tire even to try walking on the gravel path beyond my back door. Gravel? Nothing in the human realm is moving. Birds flutter to the feeder or skate to a speck of nourishment on the sloping driveway. Somewhere in the wood sweeping toward Flett Creek or the meadow north of the Glen, a deer stirs in semi-alert repose, an owl with a firm grip on dawn shivers itself fed from the night’s provision and ponded fish laze in the stillness of their cold surround, a stillness now that lays hesitation across our cautious world, so carefully planned. We’ve seen the work of winter’s ice before, limbs, whole trees, weighted to bend or crack, yielding to the stealthy accumulation in falling temps. But today, this one, is most unusual.

Warmth will come by noon or one and frozen gesture thaw, animating life, stirring design. But for now, nothing moves across the frozen sheen of slick bearing. No bus edges to a stop, no passenger awaits. No de-iced jet plane taxis or lands with no runway safe. The geographic breadth of our layered activity cessation stretches toward the Cascades, where something resembling typical winter ascends to carry east into a continent further stilled in the grip of this peculiar ice storm, one of record.   

Through all of this, and for the past three days, my neglected provision for the brave wintering hummingbirds, generally resident, has offered only ice, discouraging more by the sweet promise frozen. I make a special trip and single purchase to replenish both larder and feeder. Re-supply awaits reveille, my waiting to present and wondering, always how and now, whether they survive. They do, somehow, and two appear; sharing first in primal need before dominance asserts and one returns to fluffed alert, presiding.  

I check the driveway. It’s still “911” perilous. Time for salt, the substitute de-ice stuff, thankful my luxury demands nothing further, no chains or studded four-wheel and weighted traction. The icicled eaves and seagull spouts are streaming now, the hummer guarding with eagle intensity. And the solstice tilt begins, promising seasonal latitudes over our “pale blue dot,” home of uncertain worlds where, in time, weather humbles all creatures.