Blei Lines
Blog #13

DECEMBER Notebook

WITH THE APPROACH OF CHRISTMAS, the warmth of a small town atmosphere, a country life, as the lights, colored and white, begin to glow in village, town and countryside up and down the peninsula. Every year, more lights. Everywhere one glances, new surprises, small delights from Sturgeon Bay to Gills Rock, Baileys Harbor to Egg Harbor. Even in the darkest recesses of the county's interior, driving the backroads for the pure solace of the countryside in all seasons, but especially winter, winter-white, white moon, white buildings, the sky strewn with stars...suddenly, in this season, like the kings coming upon the north star...in the distance, the front porches of farmhouses, the outbuildings, the maple and pine trees, even the barns, glowing in the color of Christmas light.

DOMESTICATED DOOR IN DECEMBER...after all these years, from the l960's to the millennium, the rawness and threat of nature seem less fearsome, almost in retreat. Which is difficult to explain when any man facing a winter alone here, anywhere close to water or wilderness, will surely still feel some pangs of isolation, some feeling of being set adrift upon a deserted landscape. In the past, one almost feared the approach of winter here, on the northernmost reach of the peninsula, while now somehow the beast has been tamed. It's not that nature itself has changed (though there is no doubt some case to be made for the warming of the earth, man's negative effect upon the world from a global perspective) so much as we have changed both our inner and outer landscapes. As the county continues to grow as the result of tourism and development--more visitors mean, eventually, more residents, more homes and businesses. Which in turn means less natural landscape...less natural shoreline, fewer trees, open spaces, etc. As the visible landscape of Door becomes more domesticated, so too are we, somewhere within ourselves, rendered less daring, less natural, less spiritual. In this sense of securing nature for own comforts we have tamed the primitive awareness of wonder within ourselves.

THE SHRILL NORTH WIND of December (I almost welcome the reminder---nature as terror) slashing through the trees, stirring up what remains of autumns leaves upon the ground, restraining a man's steps to slow motion with a large, airy hand, bending him down, turning him around, pushing back into himself. This is the wind before the snow, before the inevitable winter blizzards. It's winter's invisible blow, flexing its muscles, checking it's temperature--the wind-chill factor. It's the wind that stirs up the harbors and bays most susceptible to its wrath--Gills Rock, Ellison, Sister, Ephraim--sending white waves upon white wave crashing against steel and concrete docks, spraying the air in great plumes, retreating in the finest coating of ice...layering and building winter's invisible glass coat.

A “SCAND” CHRISTMAS PARTY MEMORY…the dining room filled with residents at tables, in wheelchairs, rolling beds. The always attentive staff fluttering about, everywhere at once. Visitors, friends, family, slowly filter in, festive and sad, keenly aware what Times does to us all. Here a recognizable neighbor who no longer recognizes us; there an old face you never realized moved from the farm to this new home in town. Here they all are amongst us, faces, personalities, characters not as they once were, but as they are now, making the final adjustment, many of the local folks thankful they are still here, part of the community, however different their daily life might be. Cookies, carols, (a church choir from Ephraim Moravian), Christmas tree, Santa Claus and helpers passing out gifts--Leo's green knitted cap, Grandma T. and her cow slippers, the blind woman (Esther?) continually asking about what was in a gift box (a pin already pinned to her)..the woman crying who would not open her gifts because her husband was not here. All the gifts bought by the generous staff... Gloria, Chris, Tom, Debbie(?)…and the incomparable woman, Lynn, always with a kind word and a smile for everyone.

THE PILEATED WOODPECKER...today, who doesn't fly so much as swoop, swoop. swoop, from tress to tree. Attaching himself vertically, like a magnet to a pulpy trunk. Eyes all a-wondering, a watching. The black and white barred body. The carnival red crest. Here! Here! The joker's back in town.

PA’S HOUSE (CARL CARLSON) THIS DECEMBER...remains vacant. Such an eerie feeling of abandonment as I approach his place in darkness, walking my road to the lake, this December nigh. For me, a beacon on my night walks for more than 20 years…something akin to a lighthouse shut down. Pa, for the first time in 90 some years, relinquishing to the demands old age...(having fallen and pinched a nerve, dependent upon a walker) has moved a little further down the road to stay with his son, Carl T. and his wife, Cheryl. Hopefully, he will return to the old white farmhouse house in spring. What a difference, what a different house without his presence in winter---without the light glowing in the kitchen, dining room and parlor window. Without the light in the basement, where he feeds his wood furnace. Without the small pine tree in the front of the house, sparkling with Christmas tree light in December.

A COVERING OF SNOW TODAY, just before Christmas. A welcome and a warning. A welcome to see the earth again transformed. We've been waiting for he majesty and magic of white for sometime…the fields, the fence posts, the branches of trees, the blue roofs of farmhouses, the red barns. To go out in the falling snow dressed in bright, dry winter clothes awhile, then return home somebody else. To also lose the wonder of the moment with the realization that snow draws in the boundaries of one's world. Makes everything closer, tighter, more prone to fear in traveling distances which seem to extend further and further on a road of snow and ice....and night.

THE SUN HANGING LOW, DRIFTING DOWN ON A LATE, ALMOST GRAY AFTERNOON IN DECEMBER, with a line of clouds on the clouds on the western horizon. How the light that's left shoots above them on a high angle, cutting my visionary world in two as I walk, my back to it all, my own body absorbed in the lower, grayer light. While up in the tallest branches of trees, the white birch especially, an incredible wash of rosy light...the highest tress aglow.

THE BRIGHTNESS OF THIS DECEMBER MORNING. All day, just the vaguest feeling of spring. Mostly the light. A joyous to the morning that invites you in. What you see--bare branches, dead leaves, the fields fallow, the blue, blue sky--is all that you get. No promises. But as the day dissipates to afternoon, over the water, a glimpse of change in the sky. The front (last night over the Dakotas and Minnesota) about to break the party up. The uninvited guest, about to make his presence felt. Slowly stealing the light. Shifting the temperatures. Shaking his hat with snow.

THE YEAR_ ends on a fairly mild temperature note (the 30's) and remarkably, a season, thus far, of no snow. The county is filled with visitors, a whole new and growing society of condo-people, second-home people, who feel a need to return to this setting at this season...for what? Perhaps to glimpse the place as they sense it once was... To maybe catch the natives unaware. To find a more Currier & Ives reality. Part of what they think they bought into in their summertime living. (Part of what is being destroyed by inevitably turning this into the same thing they have back there, mostly in wealthy suburbia. But the place this winter of no winter, of no snow, no doubt disappoints them. Their desire to feel and know and be part of the ruggedness of winter’s past--on their terms, of course, Their terms being the mobility and wealth and choice of merely stopping by for a visit...and quickly returning to a bountiful city-life with all of the comforts, their just desserts. We who live and remain here look forward to both their visit and this time of year...and even more so to their departure. Never let them know what they are missing. There is an inner satisfaction to this...as well as something, not quite jealousy, in realizing that others may have more choices than we. Then again, we have a winter peace and isolation here that surpasseth all understanding on their part.